Police K9 Unit Ordered to Put Bark Before Bite : Law enforcement: Commission refuses to suspend use of the animals during retraining period.

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Friday ordered the Police Department’s controversial K9 unit to switch to a procedure in which search dogs’ first response to finding a suspect is to bark rather than bite.

But the commission refused to suspend use of the dogs while they are retrained--as civil-rights activists requested earlier this week--calling the animals an important law-enforcement tool that enables officers to avoid using guns.

“We’ve already ruled out the chokehold, some people want to rule out the batons. But to remove all these kinds of weapons that are in the hands of the police just means they would be left without anything except their guns,” said Commissioner Stanley K. Sheinbaum.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams agreed, saying that the dogs, “when managed and controlled properly, are better than a use of guns.”

The dogs can be pulled back, Williams said, but “no one can pull back the bullet.”

The commission met in a special session Friday to amend a report on the K9 unit, mostly making subtle changes in a document that now includes 10 recommendations for the 17-member squad. The meeting was scheduled after Sheinbaum and civil rights activists said the bark-versus-bite issue needed to be addressed more explicitly.

An interim version of the report was adopted Tuesday, capping an eight-month review prompted by allegations that Police Department dogs have mauled hundreds of people, mainly minorities.

In the commission’s most significant change, the report now states that “handler control is the paramount issue in the use of canines and the circumstances under which they may appropriately bite. Therefore, the board directs the department to continue its transition to a . . . barked alert approach.” The original report gave no such order but acknowledged that the department already has begun the change.

Civil rights activists, whose class-action lawsuit helped fuel the commission’s review, said they were still less than satisfied with the amended report. “It still doesn’t say when the dog gets to bite,” said Constance L. Rice, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“What they need to say is here’s the line, here are the circumstances under which the dog is allowed to bite. Don’t cross it,” Rice said.