It is just because of situations like this that I regularly take my two Anatolian Shepherds by our local police station on my daily walks to make sure the police KNOW the dogs and KNOW that they mean no one any harm.
A couple of months ago, I stupidly left the gate open and the male ( @200 pounds ) took a walk and found some neighbor's cats which immediately climbed up a tree. The neighbor call the police, they called me and when I showed up the officer had a rope tied to Dakota's collar and was petting him and telling the lady what a nice dog he was. No harm done, just scared the cat owner to death.