Police Departments Pull Pit Bulls from Local Shelters to Train as Official Canine Officers

Pit Bulls have such a bad reputation that some communities and cities (like Montreal) are banning their breed all together.  Protect Pit Bulls from BSL online (BSL stands for Breed Selection Legislation) is working to stop the ban and change the way people think about Pit Bulls.


Police departments like the Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia Police Department, and the Poughkeepsie Police Department in New York are helping in a big way.  Instead of spending $10,000 to $15,000 on pure breed German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois, they are going to their local shelters and finding abandoned Pit Bulls.  Without their intervention, these dogs would have been euthanized.

Police departments all over the country are now working with programs like Animal Farm Foundation, Austin Pets Alive! and Universal K9 to train Pit Bulls to be official police canines.  They are finding that rescued Pit Bulls can be obedient and hard-working police and military assets.  They can learn everything from narcotics, explosives, cadaver and arson detection and criminal apprehension.

“Any dog that has the drive, confidence, and desire to work can do it! Breed does not dictate a dog’s ability to work,” explained Universal K9 founder Brad Croft.

If this trend continues, Pit Bulls may no longer be the villains of the dog world but a great help in catching villains in the real world!

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Meet Kiah, the Rescued Pit Bull That Defies The Harmful Stereotype About Her Breed, As She Works to Help Police Find and Protect People

At only 60 pounds, Kiah is not like most other K9 police dogs. She’s also different because she’s a Pit Bull, which are often stereotyped as aggressive monsters used for fighting. Kiah is proving that Pit Bulls can defy these harmful stereotypes and work to help police find and protect people. She’ll be using her excellent nose to track missing persons and detect drugs for the Poughkeepsie Police Department north of New York City.

Kiah comes to the force courtesy of the Animal Farm Foundation, which is a non-profit rescue group trying to put an end to misinformation about Pit Bulls. They partnered with Universal K9, a group that looks through animal shelters for dogs that might make good additions to police forces. They provided Kiah to the Poughkeepsie Police Department at no cost, which is good considering a traditional police dog can cost up to $15,000.

Kiah seems very happy to please her trainers and will act as an ambassador for her breed. She has a home now. Pit Bulls usually have trouble getting adopted because of the stereotypes surrounding them. A shelter dog with a poor chance of being adopted found a place where she belongs, a police department got a free K9 dog to help them, and the people of Poughkeepsie are safer with Kiah on the job. Everybody wins.

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