MORGAN HILL, Calif. -- A police dog that attacked another canine and bit his human partner has stirred a debate over whether he should be allowed back in the line of duty.
The 5-year-old German shepherd, named Scooby, was placed on leave from the K-9 unit of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department after the off-duty attack in January.
Department officials said they don't know what they are going to do with Scooby, but he can't return to work sniffing out burglars and drugs.
But the head of the K-9 unit and the deputy sheriff who trained and lived with the dog claim he isn't dangerous and shouldn't be forced into early retirement.
The trainer, Deputy Julie Wilbanks, said she wants to buy Scooby from the department and continue caring for him at home if he isn't reinstated.
But many of the deputy's neighbors in the Morgan Hill area where the attack took place are opposed to that. The owners of the dog Scooby attacked are threatening to sue if he isn't removed from the neighborhood.
"There's no place for a dog like that in a neighborhood where there are children," said Bob Long, whose dog suffered several puncture wounds. "If it went after a dog like that, who says it won't go after a child?"
During the January incident, Scooby escaped from a side door and grabbed onto another dog's neck with his teeth until an observer hit him over the head with a board.
The deputy was bitten in the hand when she tried to separate the two dogs and required 12 stitches and three months off work to recover from the injury.
Wilbanks nevertheless said sidelining Scooby would be a waste of the 30-thousand dollars the department spent buying and training the dog. She also said she would be heartbroken if they were separated.
"I don't have kids. He's all I have. If you take him away from me, it'll break my heart," she said.
Robert S. Eden, a police dog trainer from Vancouver, B.C., said the behavior Scooby exhibited doesn't make him unfit for police work.
"What this dog did was part of his normal territorial instinct," said Robert S. Eden, a police dog trainer from Vancouver, B.C. "It's very natural. There's no reason why he shouldn't continue as a working dog."
