The most common uses for a police dog is for the dog to guard their handler and to track down, chase and detain suspects that are eluding the police. There are other trained police dogs that are trained to detect drugs in places like where houses as well as in luggage at airports. Modern day police dogs should not be looked upon as vicious creatures. They are extremely well trained animals that really enjoy their work.
Police dogs are trained to think of their work as a game that is played by commands given by their handler. Dogs that are trained for police work are trained to never bite only to grab onto their target and not release whatever it is that they are holding until their handler tells them the command for release. So although it is not their intention to bite if a police dog is given the command to grab a suspect if that suspect puts up a fight he could be bitten when the police dog takes him down. Normally police officers give a suspect one opportunity to surrender then they are given a warning that if they do not then a police dog will be set loose to apprehend them.
Many police dogs teams use the bark and pursue method of catching suspects. This is a great method as it allows the police dog to take off after a suspect and hold them until assistance arrives while barking to let the police officer know its current location.
Most police dogs live with the police officer that they have been teamed up with and spend a lot of time interacting with them as well as the police officers family outside of doing police work. This helps the police dog team trust each other to be able to work better as a team and also keeps the dog from becoming mean as it is allowed to be social animal, which makes for a happy friendly dog.
Good training is essential for the police officer to be able to properly work with his police dog and be able to take complete control of the dog whenever the is a situation that calls for him to do so.