The dog in the photo is K9 Officer Kane, with the Ocean County Sheriff's Office in New Jersey. As of this writing, K9 Kane is recovering in a veterinary hospital from a stab wound inflicted by a man who was subsequently shot and killed by police.
It all happened this week in a small oceanfront community of multi-million-dollar homes and fewer than 300 year-round residents.
The man, wanted by authorities on charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault, theft and weapons offenses, was found to be holed up in a house in the beachfront town. Confronted by the police, the man was holding a knife and ignored orders to drop it. That’s when K9 Kane was released.
Unfortunately, rather than dropping the knife at that point the man used it to stab the dog, and that’s when the officers fired. Happily, the dog is expected to recover, and justifiably, the man was killed by the gunfire.
That may sound harsh – “justifiably, the man was killed” – but if you are wanted by the cops, brandish a knife, refuse to obey orders to drop the knife, and stab a dog, we do not have sympathy for you.
True, there could be underlying emotional or mental issues that contributed to the man’s behavior. Public information in this case does not yet address such questions. But we still cannot think charitably when a K9 is stabbed.
K9 officers are just that, officers. We make badges for them. But where a human officer has a full understanding of the risks of the job, the K9 only knows his mission is to subdue the suspect, without an intellectual appreciation of the risks. This is why we and most people are appalled when a K9 is injured (or worse) on the job.
We hope that K9 Kane recovers fully, and that the small beach town can return to its quiet normalcy.
