I've noticed that some members of the forum have ties or experience with police work. To them I address this question: Does this sound right?

A couple days ago, we came home to find someone's pickup parked along our tree row. The guy was outside the truck, trying to coax a young German shepherd out of the road.

We went up to him to find out what was up, just as he succeeded in getting the dog out of the road and his hand in the dog's collar. The dog seemed upset and confused, but otherwise well-behaved. We checked the collar for an owner, to find that the owner was the County Sheriff and this was a K-9 dog.

My question has to do first with whether it's normal or even acceptable for a dog of this kind to get loose. My understanding is that dogs undergo extensive (and expensive) training for police work, and I wouldn't think you'd want them running around un-supervised.

The backstory of this is the efforts of the County Commissioners to create a county police force, separate from the Sheriff, who would be relegated to running the county slammer and transporting prisioners. Now, normally I'd oppose this. First, why go to the expense of creating whole new branch when you already have a sheriff who is answerable to the voters? I've lived in plenty of counties in my time, served by good-to-excellent sheriff departments. Besides that, our County Commissioners remind me of something out of The Dukes of Hazzard. On the other hand, our sheriff's department has been singularly useless.

Thus my question goes to this point: Is the sheriff's department, in its running of its K-9 squad, also incompetent, or does this sort of thing happen and I shouldn't worry?

Thanks,

j

PS: To prevent confusion, you should know that I don't actually live within DC, but in Maryland north of there.

j