I'm afraid you're on the money about breeding Shepherds, Manchesters! Although they're the one breed of dog I never want to be without, sadly, the soundest ones I've had, aside from my first, who was farm-bred, have been rescued mixes, particularly Bear, who was a GSD/Akita mix and now Bimmer, who is a GSD/wolf mix.
Charley and I had discussed future Filas for police work, as we know some of the 'powers that be' and they are very impressed with the dogs and have asked about the possibility in the future (Charley also has a reputation around here for having bred very sound, old temperament styled Dobermans in the past), but knowing what I know about too many of the K9 officers, I would never, ever want to take a chance on one of MY pups falling into their hands! I also find it abhorrent to put animals in harms' way to clean up human messes! Search and rescue is one thing, but to put a dog - or any animal - in the line of fire to take a bullet instead of a human in the pursuit of a human or any type of warfare is just so wrong! We need to be responsible for cleaning up after our own - not pawn it off on another creature who is willing out of the pure desire to please one of us. We get bombarded with all sorts of wonderful, heroic stories about police dogs saving their partners and catching the bad guy, and doing all sorts of wondrous feats of valor, but the dogs have no real choice other than to race into danger and all too often suffer painfully or die a painful, frightening and unnecessary death. They've been conditioned to act against their own safety on the command of a person who may or may not have any real idea of what that dog is being sent into. And there are far more perps out there who won't hesitate to shoot a dog - who can't hurt them until it can actually make contact - where they would think twice about shooting an officer who has a gun! It's really a grossly unfair proposition when you think about it. Dogs don't care about glory, or promotions or having their names all over the news . . . and they aren't being paid to risk their lives either! But their handlers do . . . so why not let the handlers take the risks and leave the dogs out of it?
(This is me, jumping down off my soapbox now, lol!)