Nobody is arguing that the dog was acting properly. Not one person. It was poorly trained, obviously.
Beating a dog around the head is not proper training. And I have fifty bucks that says you never did it.
No, I never did. I also didn't specifically endorse what the officer did, either.
The guy filming says he saw what you describe (and describes it the same way) before he started recording.
I’m surprised a dog would even get that far in its training if it had a propensity for biting its handler. I guess I always thought when they talk about how expensive and extensive their training was they were basically finished dogs by the time they get to their handler. In the bird dog world professional trainers will wash out lower performing dogs to the pet and weekend warrior client base and only the very best go on to top tier clients.
The Belgian malanois I had was already trained before I got him. I just had to train with him as a handler. We had to get used to, and trust each other. But many K9s are selected by trainers and then get paired with a handler from the beginning. The handler works with the dog to do all of the initial training, at the direction of a trainer.
You really need to use both positive and negative reinforcement to train a police dog. They need the right drive. They need to be ball driven. It's mostly reward/positive reinforcement based. But negative reinforcement has it's place. That what shock collars and dog whips are all about. Sometimes it takes negative reinforcement to correct bad behavior, and it's an ongoing process. Mals are spastic. They will constantly push the limits on obedience. They work for the reward, which was a tug o war with a toy. But they need to give that up on command. And when an issue like that arises, it takes negative reinforcement to correct.
In certification training for apprehension/protection work, the handler needs to be able to make the dog search on command, bite on command, and release a bite on command. That last one is harder because it requires the dog to break his drive. If the dog won't release a bite, the handler has to be able to go in and make the dog release and pull it off the person.