POLICE BRUTALITY: Dog Beaten & Shot Dead By
Overreacting Cop At Crowded Street Festival
EDITORS NOTE: ALTHOUGH THIS HAPPENED
IN 2010 I FELT IT NEEDED TO BE SHOWN TO THE READERS.
(ILD) Was the shooting death of a
dog by a police officer during a crowded street festival in Washington, D.C.
justified? A Poodle mix and a Pit Bull-Shar Pei mix named Parrot got into a
scuffle at the Adams Morgan Day festival. Aaron Block, Parrot’s owner, told the
Washington Post that he had separated the dogs and was trying to calm Parrot
when police officers arrived.
In a statement, Block said Officer
Scott Fike knocked him off of Parrot. As a photo taken by witness “Darcycat1”
shows, Fike then kneed Parrot in the back and yanked the dog’s front paws
underneath him.
Lifting the dog by his neck and
back, Fike then threw Parrot over a banister and down a 10-foot concrete
stairwell. Block says that when his dog – who “doesn’t handle stairs well” and
was 12 to 15 steps away from Fike – staggered to his feet, the officer shot and
killed him.
“The officer drew his gun in an
unnecessary act of cowboy gun-slinging law enforcement and shot my dog amidst a
crowd of thousands,” Block said. He had been fostering Parrot through Lucky Dog
Animal Rescue.
The police report (PDF) tells an
different story, stating that Parrot charged toward Fike in the stairwell.
According to the report, Fike, “[f]earing for his safety and the safety of the
large crowd that had gathered, discharged one round from his departmental
issued 9MM Glock striking the pitbull causing it to fall to the bottom of the
stairs. The pitbull later expired.”
Two festival attendees agree with
the police report, although neither witnessed the actual shooting. Tony De
Pass, a former D.C. police officer, told the Washington Post that Parrot
snapped at Fike as the officer held him down, prompting Fike to throw the dog
down the stairwell. (The police report says Fike was not bitten, but only
scratched on his hand and wrist.) Soleiman Askarinam, the owner of a nearby
restaurant, said it took several officers to get Parrot under control, and he
felt police “did a good job” in controlling the situation.
Many more witnesses dispute the
report. Lucky Dog Animal Rescue reports that one unnamed witness said Parrot
appeared to be stunned from the fall and did not charge the officer. The
witness said the dog had just gotten to his feet when Fike drew his gun and
opened fire without provocation.
“This I saw because I was standing
at the doorway of the business where the dog was killed,” the witness said. “As
I turned away, in one to three seconds a single shot rang out. I then went out
on the platform above the stairwell, and saw the dying dog’s head was nearly on
top of the floor drain next to the locked gate at the bottom of the steps,
facing away from the steps.”
Other horrified witnesses included
9-year-old Neda Changuit and her parents, who said Parrot appeared to be
subdued before Fike threw him over the banister. Changuit’s mother watched
“with shock and total disbelief” as Fike calmly fired at the dog. “I thought
initially that it couldn’t possibly be a real gun,” she told the Washington
Post.
Sushi, the Poodle mix involved in
the fight – and who some eyewitnesses say initiated the scuffle — is recovering
from two broken bones and a large gash. Her owner, Sheila Martins, told the
Washington Post, “the police did the right thing because at that moment, the
dog, it wasn’t controllable. I could tell like how aggressive the dog was. If
he would start running around, he would attack somebody.” Martins did not
witness the shooting.
Parrot is not the only dog to have
been questionably shot and killed by a police officer in recent months. As we
reported last month, an off-duty officer shot dead Bear-Bear in a Maryland dog
park after he got in a scuffle with his dog. The officer, Keith Shepherd, was
charged with two misdemeanors: Animal cruelty and discharging a firearm within
100 yards of an occupied home.
In another case this past Sunday in
St. Petersburg, Fla., a Chesapeake Bay Retriever and a Rottweiler were both
shot to death by what their owner called a “trigger-happy cop” after they
scuffled with an unleashed dog that attacked them during a walk. Even after the
Chessie was shot and lying on the ground, the officer, Slobodan Juric, shot her
two more times. An internal affairs investigation is underway.
Meanwhile, “in memory of a fantastic
dog,” Lucky Dog Animal Rescue has created Parrot’s Fund. Donations will be used
to rescue bully breeds in high-kill shelters and to educate the community “on
the many wonderful attributes of these dogs.”
You can demand that the D.C.
Metropolitan Police Department investigates Parrot’s shooting and takes
appropriate action against the officer by signing this petition. (Be aware that
this links to a petition targeting the Metropolitan Police Department. There is
another petition on Facebook that targets the wrong Scott Fike.)
