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.
Victory, the York Police Department's emotional support dog, serves to heal the wounds by the police misuse of dogs in the Black community in the '60s.