The larger dogs may knock over children or the elderly when playing or greeting. The best control of liability is the wise choice of the dog, training program, and, most of all, a handler who will properly train and utilize the dog so that it does not become a liability. A police dog will only reflect the personality of the handler who trains him because the handler provides leadership for the dog. An aggressive, insecure handler will end up with an aggressive and volatile dog, and the confident, considerate officer will have a friendly and controllable dog. The dog's scenting ability is the one function that human officers cannot duplicate.
Many departments employ dogs which specialize in scent work such as tracking.
Bloodhounds set the standard as tracking dogs, but they are not normally utilized for other functions such as evidence recovery, even while on track. This is unfortunate because they can easily be trained to locate evidence using a food reward. Other working and hunting breeds can be trained to track and find evidence quite successfully and will usually work much more effectively off lead than bloodhounds traditionally do. The warden K-9 teams spend considerable time working with shell casings because they are the subject of many of our searches. A comparable dog which works for a rural or suburban police department could track, locate evidence and detect narcotics.