TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas legislators are transferring to impose harder jail sentences for harming or killing police dogs, and the measure has bipartisan help regardless of questions elsewhere over how the animals are utilized in regulation enforcement.
The state House anticipated to take a remaining vote Wednesday on a bill that might permit judges to condemn first-time offenders to 5 years in jail for killing a police, arson, recreation warden or search and rescue canine, or a police horse, and mandate a fantastic of at the least $10,000. Killing the dogs already is a felony in Kansas, however the most jail sentence is one year; the utmost fantastic is $5,000, and the regulation doesn’t particularly cowl horses.
Approval by the Republican-controlled House would ship the measure to the GOP-led Senate. When the House took a preliminary voice vote Tuesday after a brief debate, only some members voted no.
The measure is a response to the dying in November of Bane, an 8-year-old canine utilized by the Sedgwick County sheriff in Wichita, the state’s largest metropolis. Authorities say a suspect in a home violence case took refuge in a storm drain and strangled Bane when a deputy despatched the canine in to flush out the suspect.
“These animals are not only tools. They are considered family,” mentioned Rep. Adam Turk, a Kansas City-area Republican. “These animals are of great import to the protection and security of our citizens.”
The invoice is sponsored by two distinguished Republicans, House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Rep. Stephen Owens, chair of the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee. But it additionally has the backing of Rep. John Carmichael, the committee’s high Democrat. Hawkins and Carmichael are from Wichita.
The federal authorities and a few states already permit longer jail sentences than Kansas. Under a 2000 federal law, a person who kills a police canine might be sentenced to as much as 10 years in jail. In 2019, the attainable penalty in Florida elevated from as much as 5 years in jail to as much as 15 years. Tennessee elevated its penalties in 2022, and Kentucky did so final 12 months.
But accidents attributable to police dogs even have made headlines.
In rural Ohio in July 2023, a police canine bit a Black truck driver severely sufficient that he wanted hospital remedy after the person was on his knees together with his fingers within the air.
The Salt Lake City police division suspended its canine apprehension program in 2020 after a Black man was bitten and an audit discovered 27 canine chew instances throughout the earlier two years. And the identical 12 months, a Black man in Lafayette, Indiana, was placed in a medically induced coma after police dogs mauled him as he was arrested in a battery case.
During Tuesday’s debate within the Kansas House, Democratic Rep. Ford Carr, of Wichita, one among six Black members, talked about the Ohio case and recalled how throughout the Civil Rights Movement, authorities turned dogs on peaceable Black protesters.
Carr additionally recommended the Wichita suspect was defending himself.
“I don’t think that there’s any one of us here who would sit idly by and let an animal maul you without fighting back,” Carr mentioned.
Carmichael, who’s white, acknowledged the fraught historical past surrounding police dogs, however he urged Carr to evaluation testimony throughout the House committee’s listening to on the invoice earlier this month. Four regulation enforcement officers backed the measure, and nobody spoke towards it.
Bane’s handler, Sedgwick County Deputy Tyler Brooks, informed the committee that Bane turned necessary to his household.
“It’s kind of funny to me that this very large dog who frequently broke things and knocked everything over during a training session would be the one that would be the one that would break my 7-year-old autistic son of his crippling fear of dogs,” Brooks informed the committee.