The most confrontational task a police dog is faced with is helping public enforcement. These dogs aren’t trained to seek out smells, but to use aggression to deal with the public. While a slightly more dangerous game, their training is still a game. It typically comes in three steps, general obedience, chasing, and biting.
Obedience is important for every K9, but especially in this job. These police dogs need to keep a calm head in crowds and anxiety heavy situations, so they have to be very obedient and well behaved. Since the dog is being raised to actually bite people, it is key that they have the self-control to let go when told.
A K9 is first trained to chase a target. A trained will deliberately antagonise and tease the dog until it chases them on cue. Once they've mastered chasing, they're then trained to chase and then bite. This bite needs to be controlled, so a dog will only do it when necessary. It needs to be a bite to incapacitate, not to maim. This training is very delicate. Training a dog to be aggressive and rewarding aggression has to be balanced with control. These dogs are still learning through a game, but a more violent one.
Most of the things that K9 dogs do seem impressive, but they're really just elaborate games. These dogs are highly disciplined, but like all dogs, they're mainly interested in playing. Games of hide and seek can be used to find bombs, drugs, or missing people, but to a dog, it is still just hide and seek. These exercises are a great example of how much an intelligent dog can do with the right training. While they achieve big things, police dogs are still just dogs having fun.