In such instances the dog unit has to take the suspects to hospital and guard them until the wounds are treated. The ideal is to have a dog that simply grabs the suspect and holds on to him for you. The ideal is for the suspect to simply have one or two small puncture wounds and nothing else. If your dog bites viciously then you spend eight, nine or 10 hours waiting in a hospital for him to be treated. And that is soul-deadening stuff.
Nobody wants that.
MacNicol says in some American cities police dogs are trained to simply circle the suspect and bark at them. Sadly that would not work here. A large number of our suspects are armed and if the dog does not tackle them then the dog or the handler, or both, may be killed by gunfire. The dog needs to tackle the suspect and hold him for the sake of its own life and that of the handler. To train police dogs in Durban dog handlers set their dogs on each other.