What’s with the Amtrak dogs?
Nobody wants to hate on homeland security dogs. They’re heroes, too. They risk their lives to sniff for explosives. And that’s no joke. But to deploy dogs to eject Union Station patrons is another story. There’s just way too much room for error.
This week I have a story on two high school kids who were ejected from a Union Station’s men’s room by a pair of Amtrak cops and a dog. In interviewing the two teenagers, they recounted several other instances of questionable dog practices at the commuter hub. One time, they watched an Amtrak police dog used to evict an old homeless man from the McDonald’s. They say the man was just trying to buy a burger. After he was refused service, the dog was called into action.
Another time, a cop was walking his police dog just outside the station. The dog repeatedly barked, growled, and scared any child that passed. After complaining to the cop about his dog, the cop just replied that the dog doesn’t like kids.
An Amtrak spokesperson says that the dogs are often used on routine patrols.
Do you think Amtrak uses their dogs too much? Have you all had any run-ins with Amtrak dogs?
3 Responses to “What’s with the Amtrak dogs?”
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October 11th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
What these guys have too much time on their hands? How much fun is scaring young people with your dog? The big question for me is how apathetic the authorities became in their handling of the situation as if stressed, or maybe the dissatisfaction with the paper work and following through on the legitimacy of a complaint was just too much for these idiots?
October 12th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I can relate — with the dog — I don’t like kids either. Frankly, I’d rather have the dogs on the trains than some of the passengers I encounter on there.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Police officers won’t do anything inconvenient, and it is inconvenient to eject someone from a men’s room who is actually in the process of eliminating bodily waste, so the reader may safely infer that the teenagers were up to something else.
That particular McDonald’s has such low standards that it is unimaginable it would turn away a paying customer. Therefore it probably didn’t.
In all, it seems the dogs are batting .66. That’s pretty good. It might even be better than human police officers do.