Four-legged agents of the law

At the dawn of the 20th centu ury, fear of crime in Paris was soaring. Lurid newsspaper articles routinneely portrayed the city as a wild, ddangerous place, wheere violent street-gangs (so-calleed ‘Apaches’) preyed ono hapless citizens.

The police needed to fight back – and fast – and d so enlisted the services of Paris’s pooches. Drawing ono the experience of police dog units in Belgium and Ger rm many, French law-enforcers started to train dogs to iden nt ify criminals and defend themselves against Apaches s .

Scientists and philosophers had long posed thee question: are dogs intelligent? For the police, the answera was a definitive ‘yes’, and they promoted their dog gs s’ mental dexterity and physical prowess at dog sho ows,ws, and many newspapers enthusiastically reported on the exploits of the “four-legged agents of the law”.

Such was these canines’ apparent success that Apache gangs reportedly trained their own dogs to attack the police’s hounds. But doubts soon began to emerge about dogs’ intelligence: could they really distinguish between criminals and innocent citizens? With such concerns rising, the attempt to turn dogs into canine crime-fighters floundered during the First World War and was only resurrected in earnest in 1965.

“The cutlets were over-marinated, he concluded, but the dog-liver brochettes were ‘ tender and completely agreeable’”