46 police dogs died in hot squad cars

• At least 46 U.S. police dogs died of heatstroke while trapped in squad cars in the past five years.
• Brown County Sheriff's Office dog Wix is the only heatstroke victim in Wisconsin since at least 2011
• Advocates and handlers say most effective prevention of heatstroke is paying attention to your dog.

Police dogs die from heatstroke more than any other non-medical reason, and most of them spend their last moments sweltering in squad cars.

At least 46 police dogs across the United States died from overwhelming heat while locked inside their handlers’ cars during the past five years alone, according to a Press-Gazette Media review of 619 deaths since 2011.

At least 18 more dogs died of heatstroke after being pushed too hard during training exercises, while tied outside in direct sunlight or other reasons.

Both veteran handlers and animal advocates say such deaths are preventable and illustrate acts of negligence or over-reliance on technology to protect the dogs.

Wix, a Brown County Sheriff’s Office bomb-detection dog became the first in Wisconsin to die from heatstroke in recent history. The 3-year-old Belgian Malinois died in his handler’s squad car after the air conditioning and heat alarm failed Aug. 12. The car was parked under direct sunlight in a field at the PGA Championship golf tournament near Sheboygan. An internal investigation determined the handler did nothing wrong.

Police officers need to be held to a higher standard to protect their canine partners, said Russ Hess, a retired handler and executive director of the United States Police K9 Association.

“We’re only humans, and humans make mistakes … but the responsibility stays with the officer to check on his dog just as if it were his child,” Hess said.

In one horrifying incident from 2013, 10 U.S. Customs and Border Protection dogs died in a transport vehicle while en route to a canine training center at Fort Bliss, Texas. The air conditioning failed during the trip, and the dogs arrived dead, the El Paso Times reported.

“Those dogs were essentially in an oven. You don’t have to be an animal lover to be sick about this,” a Fort Bliss spokesman told reporters at the time.

No one knows exactly how many police dogs die from heatstroke every year. Law enforcement agencies aren’t required to report it.

Two memorial websites that track police dog deaths — the Connecticut Police Work Dog Association and Officer Down Memorial Page — identified 64 deaths from heatstroke on U.S. soil since 2011.

“To our way of looking at things, an officer who allows a dog to die of heat exhaustion on duty is as neglectful as leaving a service revolver on a school playground,” said Scott Heiser, director of the criminal justice program for the California-based Animal Legal Defense Fund.

“These types of cases just simply shouldn’t be happening,” Heiser said.

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Brown County unique

The Brown County Sheriff’s Office described the death of police dog Wix as a perfect storm of equipment failures. Its investigation concluded no wrongdoing by the dog’s handler. A blower motor in the car’s air-conditioning system stopped working, and a warning device called a Hot-N-Pop did not sound an alarm or lower the car’s windows as expected.

There are no other confirmed cases of police dogs dying after heat alarm failures anywhere in the U.S. in the past five years.

Officers in Camden, N.J., suspected a heat alarm built by Colorado-based Ray Allen Manufacturing failed in 2012, causing a police dog to die, according to news reports.

The department was disbanded and reformed under a new county-wide agency in 2012. No one with the new agency was able to comment on whether the alarm failed, was improperly installed or if the officer neglected to activate it, Public Information Officer Michael Daniels said.

Ray Allen Chief Operating Officer John Oakley did not respond to a request for comment.

In Brown County, tests of the heat alarm revealed that an automatic shut-off setting was causing the device to deactivate improperly. The owner of Ace K9, which manufactured the Hot-N-Pop alarm, came to Green Bay and confirmed the department's findings, according to a final report released by the Sheriff’s Office.

Ace K9 replaced all four of the department’s alarms with updated models at no cost, Chief Deputy Todd Delain said.

“For the company to send the owner and CEO all the way from Florida, and the fact they took responsibility for their part of (the incident), says a lot about the company itself,” Delain said.

Top killer

Air conditioning and other equipment failures were reported as factors in 19 of the 46 heatstroke deaths in squad cars identified by Press-Gazette Media.

Officer negligence was reported in 26 of the incidents.

In 2012, a police dog from Warwick, Ga., died in the back of a sport utility vehicle after being forgotten there while her handler left town for three days. The dog tore through the interior of the vehicle trying to escape, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported.

In 2014, a German shepherd from Medina, Ohio, overheated and died after his handler left him in a squad car for four hours while doing paperwork at the police station, the Northeast Ohio Media Group reported.

Heatstroke is so common that it killed more police dogs in the past five years than gunshots, stabbings or even car strikes, Press-Gazette Media found while analyzing 619 deaths identified on the memorial websites and in various news reports.

Most deaths were caused by cancer, heart disease or other medical issues. However, 200 were identified as being the result of traumatic causes.

Heatstroke made up nearly one-third, or 32 percent, of the traumatic deaths. By comparison, 25 percent died after being hit by a vehicle, and 16 percent died from gunshots.

The findings are similar to a 2014 study of 867 police dog deaths between 2002 and 2012 that found heatstroke to be the second highest cause of traumatic deaths, just slightly behind car strikes.

Heatstroke can be a miserable death for dogs. Once the animal’s temperature rises above 105 degrees, its cells begin to break down, leading to organ failure and eventually death.

“The injury from heat can affect the brain, kidney, liver and heart. That’s what makes it such a scary process,” said Veterinarian Julie Walker, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine.

Typical police dog breeds, including Belgian malinois and German shepherd, are particularly vulnerable to heat because of their dark and thick fur. They’re also extremely active animals that can spend long hours in squad cars.

Temperatures in a closed vehicle can rise as dramatically as 40 degrees in one hour, according to The American Veterinary Medical Association.

“The need to be ready for duty, but still in the car, puts them at a high risk,” Walker said.

Lessons learned

Wix’s death reverberated throughout law enforcement agencies across Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Law Enforcement Canine Handler Association held its annual training conference in Brown County this week. One of the first sessions focused on heat exhaustion, said association president Todd Skarban, a canine handler for the Oconto County Sheriff’s Department.

“We incorporated a lot of the tragedy that happened in Brown County a couple months ago into our training,” Skarban said.

The association recommends every department use heat alarm systems, but, more important, that handlers never stop paying attention to the dogs’ needs.

“It’s not a matter of changing policy. Check on your dog. We all ultimately have to do that,” Skarban said.

Brown County is implementing several changes to help prevent future heatstroke deaths. Changes include buying and mounting fans in one window of all K9 unit squad cars, performing monthly inspections of air-conditioning units during summer months, and requiring handlers to keep both rear windows all the way open when away from the vehicle for a considerable time.

Other departments across the country have also made changes following canine deaths.

The Fresno County Sheriff's Office in Fresno, Calif., began requiring daily heat alarm system checks after a dog died in 2011 when his handler forgot to activate the alarm.

"The properly installed heat alert system is only a tool and is not intended to replace the handler's responsibility of checking on the dog regularly when possible," Fresno County Sheriff's Lt. John Reynolds said.

arodewal@pressgazettemedia.com and follow him on Twitter @AdamGRodewald and on Facebook at Facebook.com/AdamGRodewald.