This happened Saturday the 1st of December. Sorry it’s a local FOX link, I wanted to give y’all the print and video version and the Trib website sucks.
From the article:
I met this dog. I don’t believe for a second that he showed even an iota of aggression toward this cop or gave any reason whatsoever for someone to feel even remotely threatened by this little guy. The only thing he did wrong was be off leash - no excuse to shoot him.
I try to defend police for the most part, but this, this is one trigger-happy dude.
The best part is how the police came back three days later, asked the owners why they contacted the media, and then wrote them a ticket for the dog being off leash. Nice.
Yeah, love that. They picked on the wrong dog this time, though. It would seem, based on seeing the house in the video and knowing what neighborhood it’s in, these folks have the resources to take it as far through the court system as they possibly can.
Dogs get shot by cops at a rate of about 2-3 times per week in the US. If you really want to be constantly depressed and outraged, follow the “Mr Policeman please don’t shoot my dog” page on Facebook. These cops are a bunch of trigger happy thugs. I’ve lost all respect and trust I once had for them, following these stories.
Yeah, show dogs can run in the $1,000s. These guys have money. And this time for once, it’s not a “pit bull mix” like all the other dogs that get shot seem to be. It’s got a pedigree they can prove.
Have you not heard? All dogs are “pit-bull type” when police are involved. The War on Drugs, aside from being a War on Civil Liberties, is also a War on Dogs.
My neighbor is a cop, and he’s afraid of my dogs. Yes, I have several large dogs (doberman, 2 German shepherds, standard poodle, giant schnauzer and English setter), but they’re friendly and have come with me to their house several times. they’re good with his kids. He’s glad they’re there, protecting my farm and his, but he won’t come in my yard. His wife agreed to foster a lab for a week for a local rescue. It had to go to the vet’s office, and he didn’t want it even in the bed of his truck in a crate. He was going to hook up a trailer to take the dog to the vet.
If a dog came at him, I have no doubt he’d shoot it. I think all cops should be required to undergo some training with dogs.
Thanks for admitting you don’t use your gun as a last resort. There are several ways to deal with an aggressive dog that do not involve shooting them. You’re bragging about your own ignorance of the subject.
And cops wonder why so many people don’t trust them. Shooting things because they look aggressive is not a reasonable reaction.
And to think I normally think people care about their dogs too much. But your position is horribly unreasonable. I hope you don’t shoot someone’s dog who is just a bit paranoid and thinks you might come after them too. You were being aggressive, so, by your own logic, it would be okay.
In a follow-up video from FOX, you can see how the dog behaves while being held in an owner’s lap during the interview. He’s clearly not the happiest about being in her lap, and he’s clearly a nice dog while putting up with it anyway.
Two witnesses have stepped forward saying the dog was not aggressive, there was no reason to pull and fire a gun on a busy street. The officer didn’t give the owner a chance to come around the other side of the car to even try to get the dog before shooting. The owner who was outside at the time is a 75-year-old man and he didn’t understand what the cop was saying at first because he doesn’t hear very well. He didn’t even comprehend what was going on at first because he didn’t realize the dog had followed him out of the gate and the dog had gone around the car out of his line of sight and into the officer’s.
All the cop had to do was walk away. He just wanted to shoot something that day.
Not surprised that the dog was a bull terrier. People often assume that any dog that looks remotely likely a bully breed is a “pit bull” and assume it’s vicious.
If you would read you own cite you would see that the vast majority of that large amount was not for the dog at all. Out of the $333,000, $2,000 was for the dog. I do know that in this state there are very tight restrictions on what can be awarded for the death of a dog. There was a recent case close by in which a dog was shot by a police officer and the family tried to sue for $5 million claiming it was a part of the family. The court told them they could attempt to sue for $500.
Right. Because of course they would have been awarded the rest just the same if their dog hadn’t been shot and killed right in front of them.
That dog was being aggressive.
Shooting a friendly puppy in the street is simply not okay. This Chicago cop needs some serious time off and a change to an unarmed desk job. If he needs to be out in the streets, well, he can direct traffic.
These dogs are not being shot because they act agreessive, or even because they might act aggressive. They’re being shot because it allows the cops to exert dominance over the humans on the scene.
I don’t see how. The death of the dog was the reason for the family to pursue the case. Just because the jury had to break it down differently due to limits of the law doesn’t mean the stem of the whole thing wasn’t based on the horror and trauma the boys went through.
It’s cases like this, awarding $620,000 (which I think may still be getting appealed, but the point has been made) that are changing precedents and calling police to task on split-second decisions to kill family pets unnecessarily. It’s slow, but it’s definitely progressing year by year and state by state, also as seen in another of my links above.
Perhaps cases like these will start to incite more animal-handling training for police. It’s really not hard, with not much training, to be able to “read” a dog in an instant. I say this as a professional animal handler who has to assess every day whether a dog is going to try to bite me or not. This is why the shooting of the puppy in the OP is so infuriating to me - there was absolutely no excuse for the cop to draw his firearm on that little guy. A 15-minute ready-made training video may have prevented this.
And that’s the stuff they need to be called out on and sued their pants off. I’m generally not one to support sue-happy people, but this is the kind of thing that should not be gotten away with. And, in this case, that motivation still doesn’t make sense. This cop just basically shot some random dog walking down the street, it’s insane.
