Ah, I remember this happening to me at the end of the summer. A stupid dippy woman let her toddler run up to our Jess and he grabbed her head and stuck his face right up to hers only to get himself snapped at. She called the police on me.

Our Jess was on a lead when it happened so she wasn't classed as being out of control in a public place. When the police came...and it was like 3 weeks later when they did, one of them went out back to see the dogs and saw for himself how friendly they usually are. He had BCs himself and admitted that his would have bitten the kid had it done the same to them too.
Both of the officers agreed that it should have been her kept better control of her child.

She tried to insist I put muzzles on the dogs but there was nothing she could do about it because Jess couldn't be proved as dangerous. She had never snapped at anyone before and she was nearly 13 years old.
I told her to get stuffed and told her she was completely stupid for allowing a toddler to run up and grab a strange dog and that nearly any dog would have snapped at him or even worse...not just our Jess. Everyone I told about it agreed with me and called her a few choice names in the process. Most people on our street supported me...even making sarcastic jokes out loud about me not having muzzles on my vicious dogs as I walked down the street, haha.

Obviously, this is in the UK but I think things are similar as they are in various parts of the states. We don't have to worry about the rabies thing here like in the States though.
Still, had our Jess not been on the lead, things could have been a whole lot different.

When I asked the officer what to do if anymore dippy mothers allowed their kids to run up, he told me to warn them to keep the children away and if they still allowed them, I had this in my defence if anything happened.

In the end, many dogs who bite would never run up and bite a person, they'd only do it if the person tried to touch them or did something that frightened them which means they aren't REALLY dangerous and any bites can be avoided if people leave them alone. Still humans being as stupid as they are sometimes...and they'll never take responsibility for their own actions, it has to be somebody elses fault.

Still, the law doesn't see things this way. Whenever some poor kids gets mauled by a dog and the paper gets hold of the story, the anti-canine feeling in society grows and there are people who want a whole list of breeds banning such as rotties, staffies, GSDs etc....people who obviously know nothing about dogs and think that a dog should act like a stuffed toy and allow anything to be done to it just to accommodate stupid humans who have no common sense.
The stories in the paper about these mauled kids always fail to mention what happened directly before the attack. They'd never mention that the kid might have stabbed the dog in the eye with a pen or trodden on it's paw or grabbed it's head and stuck their eyes right up to the dogs and made a growling noise.....no, the reader is given the impression that the dog just decided to maul and kill the child for absolutely no reason at all other than for the sheer pleasure of it.

Yes, it's all very annoying for the dog owner but it is the law that we have to abide by.

Good luck with sorting all this out.

I do agree that trying to maintain good relations with the guy that got bitten is a better bet....even if he was daft for trying to touch a strange dog without asking first.