Police Officer Shoots Dog,
Video Contradicts His Explanation
Disturbing footage from a body
cam prompts a public outcry.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORFOCT 21 2014,
5:23 PM ET
In Cleburne, Texas, a city near
Dallas with a population of roughly 30,000, a police officer responded to a 911
call from motorists stuck in a car on a residential street. They reported three
snarling dogs were preventing them from getting out.
Once on the scene, a friendly
looking pit bull ran up to the police officer with its tail wagging. The dog
was secured. "The officer was attempting to secure the other dogs until
animal control arrived when one dog became aggressive," the City of
Cleburne said in a statement about what happened next. The Cleburne Times Review quotes a short
passage from a police report filed by the officer: "An officer was called
out to an aggressive dog call in the 1500 block of Lindsey. The dog was later
located in an alleyway. The dog was shot when it charged the officer.”
The dog was shot when it
charged the officer.
That sounds defensible. Until
recently few would've questioned the police officer's version of events. After
all, there are dangerous dogs out there and instances when police are justified
in using lethal force to protect themselves from bared teeth and a strong jaw.
But this police officer was outfitted with a body camera, and the owners of the
dog requested the video from the police department. Be warned that the video is
difficult to watch. Here is what happened:
Additional context and an even
clearer version of the video is included in this local news report:
The video caused the uproar
you'd expect in North Texas. "The City is obviously concerned about the
video showing an officer shooting a dog," officials said in a statement
responding to the outcry. "As is often the case, the short video does not
tell the whole story." That's true. But the video does show that the
official version of events set down before the video's release was inaccurate.
And police reports aside, it is hard to conceive of any precipitating event
that would justify what's in the video. The police officer needlessly
approaches and whistles to the dog before shooting.
The police officer is entitled
to the presumption of innocence and a robust defense if charged with animal
cruelty. But does anyone doubt that if a Cleburne police officer's pet dog was
loose and got shot to death by a neighbor, the emergence of a video just like
this one would lead to that neighbor's immediate arrest?
This is but the latest in an
epidemic of police officers shooting dogs. If you're new to this under-covered
subject, prepare to be shocked. If I told you that police officers shoot 50
dogs a year, would you think that's high or low? What if I told you that's the
figure for metro Atlanta? I last wrote about a case in Idaho, and cited the
definitive work of Radley Balko, who has been tracking cases like this for
years. If you want to get very angry or very sad, scroll through the puppycide
subreddit.
Beyond being a problem worth
addressing itself, mistreatment of dogs by police calls in question whether
these same officers have abused people while on duty. As Cleburne police
investigate the dog-killing incident in the video above they ought to go back
and review every possible instance when the officer in question has used force.
They almost certainly won't.
