Quote: Hull White Star "So you would ban the GSD because the police use them for agression and to stop criminals? '"
German Shepherds are actually a good example of a dog that has had good publicity and bad publicity for decades - they changed the name of the breed to "Alsation" during the war years to prevent association with the hun
As its name suggests its actually a shepherd dog and not a dog that was originally bred for fighting and other than having a natural guarding instinct for its "pack" it shouldn't have any aggresion in its nature at all.
What it is, is an intelligent animal that can be easily trained to do whatever its owner wants it to do, I have a couple of relations and a close friend who are/have been dog handlers in the Police and RAF - the Police specifically don't want aggressive GSD's, its one of the things that they look for in a puppys first year (most UK Police forces breed their own dogs or use specific breeders now and don't accept gift dogs), what they want is an obedient dog who will bark and look aggressive on command and importantly, stop doing so on command, the dogs do this because to them its a game and they get rewarded for doing so, in the same way that spaniels don't actually like looking for drugs, they do it because they get a reward when they find some, its a game.
All of which is to say that the GSD can be trained to act in an aggressive way, can be trained to seize a person and hold them (try and drag your arm from a 40kg dogs mouth when he thinks the game is to try and not let go
), but then will switch off when commanded to - if a police dog won't release on command or if it remains agitated after being recalled then it will fail its one year assesment.
None of which applies to the GSD's that the Military Police use
One of my brother-in-laws was badly mauled by one of the base dogs when he was stationed in Germany simply for entering its cage with some food, the difference in the RAF is that they DO accept "gift dogs" and so have no history of the nature of the dog, they also encourage aggression as their dogs have a guarding task rather than crowd control or man-capture, and importantly the dogs are base dogs, they are kenneled on base every night and do not have the same handler from one day to the next - and when they reach seven years of age they are "retired" with the aid of a vet and a syringe of anesthetic, as re-homing them is not an option, nor is repatriatating them with the cost of quarantine.