Survey found heatstroke is second-leading cause of police dog line-of-duty deaths

Bart, a two-and-a-half-year-old German shepherd who worked as a patrol dog for the Madison County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee, died on 19 September after being left in an outdoor kennel without water for about 36 hours as temperatures reached 101F (38.3C), Sheriff Julian Wiser said in a social media video on Friday.

The dog had specialized in suspect apprehension, tracking, searches and drug detection before his handler found him dead inside the outdoor kennel on that date, according to Wiser. A veterinary necropsy found that Bart died of heatstroke caused by severe dehydration, with investigators determining that water had been inaccessible to the canine during the period his handler was away.

“This is … very sad and unfortunate,” Wiser said in the video. “We depend on our canines to help keep our community safe and our law enforcement officers, but our canines depend on us to take care of them.” The sheriff, who described himself as a former canine unit supervisor, also called the death “unfortunate and preventable.”

Bart’s handler was neither identified by the sheriff’s office nor formally charged with a crime. Wiser said the deputy resigned after being placed on administrative leave.

Wiser said his office had also served search warrants as part of simultaneous internal and criminal investigations into the dog’s death. The sheriff said the resulting findings would be forwarded to prosecutors.

Heatstroke is the second-leading cause of death for police dogs in the line of duty, behind only gunfire, according to a survey published in the Police Practice and Research Journal. The survey studied information on more than 400 canine deaths listed on the Officer Down Memorial Page website and found heatstroke was responsible for one in five such deaths. “Being left unattended and mechanical failures overwhelmingly (70.6%) characterized these heatstroke deaths,” according to an abstract of the survey. Summer months were “also significantly implicated in increasing the odds of line-of-duty heatstroke deaths,” the abstract said.