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Performance History Audits <br />Police reformers and law enforcement professionals agree on the need to identify potentially <br />problematic behavior patterns and address them promptly to reduce the chances of unlawful or <br />dangerous behavior on the part of the officer. Performance history audits (also known as early warning <br />systems) provide an important tool for law enforcement agencies to compile and analyze patterns <br />of behavior in an officer's conduct. Lexipol has long embraced the use of performance history audits <br />to flag potential training issues and other behavior before the officer's on-the-job conduct becomes <br />a problem. Our Performance History Audits Policy identifies specific data (performance indicators) <br />that should be considered in the performance history audit. This data includes use of force incidents, <br />personnel complaints, canine bite incidents, prior vehicle collisions, and claims and civil suits against <br />the officer. The policy provides for quarterly audits of every officer and defines levels of remediation, <br />potential disciplinary action, and follow-up monitoring. <br />Police Service Dogs <br />Efforts to restrict the use of police service dogs to "find and bark" tactics (vs. "find and bite") <br />and to limit their deployment to on -lead applications are impractical and contrary to virtually all <br />modern training and legal standards. Agencies effectively deploying well-trained police canine <br />teams recognize their unparalleled value in not only saving officer resources and increasing <br />officer safety, but safely and quickly locating missing persons, evidence, contraband, and <br />concealed or fleeing suspects. <br />While police service dogs can theoretically be trained to "find and bark" in a training environment, <br />studies have shown that when deployed in real-world incidents, "find and bark" dogs may actually <br />overreact, resulting in more bites than a properly trained and deployed "find and bite" canine team. <br />Historically, the ratio of bites inflicted by so-called "find and bite" dogs is low compared to the <br />number of well -executed deployments in which suspects elect to ignore clear warnings. Courts <br />have consistently recognized that "find and bite" is constitutional when objectively reasonable <br />under the totality of circumstances of each case. <br />