Loretta Claiborne recalled growing up by the Parkway projects and watching as the police would sweep through the neighborhood with the dogs, threatening people. “My mom always told me if you see a police officer with a dog, don’t pet that dog,” said Claiborne, now a world-renowned Special Olympian.
When members of the Black community protested the use of police dogs, then-Mayor John Snyder who, according to one observer, governed “as if the 20th Century had never taken place” responded by increasing the number of dogs employed by police to menace the community.
The use of the dogs was among the many factors that led to violence in the streets of York in summers of 1968 and 1969. The police K-9 Corps was disbanded in 1973.
York Dispatch
It s been 50 years since the York City Police Department stopped using K-9 dogs, and with good reason. The dogs doing the bidding of their officer handlers terrorized Black residents and helped foment York s 1968 and 1969 race riots. We just weren t supposed to broach that subject anymore, Police Commissioner Michael Muldrow told The York Dispatch. When I was a kid and involved in York City Police Department culture under my dad (retired Officer Thomas Mo Muldrow), it had always been an unwritten rule that there weren t supposed to be any kind of dogs … because of how dogs were used in the past. Or misused.