The mayor of Houston, Texas,
apologized last week to a woman whose beloved family dog died when a police
officer forced her husband to leave it on the side of the road after a traffic
stop. The helpless little 14-year-old chihuahua was already mostly blind from
cataracts and didn’t stand a chance when the officer arrested Josie Garcia’s
husband — on a charge that was quickly dropped anyway — and refused to let him
call anyone to pick up the dog.
Josie Garcia appeared at a
Houston City Council meeting on July 22 to tell her story.
On July 14, she said her
husband gave a friend a ride home from a family gathering when a Houston police
officer pulled his truck over, saying that he made a turn without using his
turn signal.
The cop then searched the car
and found, according to court records, that the friend was in possession of the
drug PCP. The officer then took the two men into custody. But Garcia said her
husband pleaded with the officer to let someone come and pick up Guero, the
lovable chihuahua who enjoyed riding in the truck and was along for the trip.
But the Houston officer
refused, telling the man to leave the dog by the side of the road, but
according to Garcia, the arresting cop said it wasn’t his problem, that the dog
would be fine.”
What makes the story even more
unbelievable is that the arrest happened close by to Houston’s Bureau of Animal
Regulation and Care. But in addition to refusing to allow the man to call
someone to get Guero, the officer didn’t even bother to call animal control to
collect the dog.
Charges against Garcia’s
husband were dropped and they put up “lost dog” posters, hoping someone had
picked Gero up and they would see the dog again. Instead, they got a call from
a Good Samaritan who said he saw Guero wandering up a freeway ramp near where
the officer forced him to be abandoned.
The Good Samaritan said he tried
to get the dog, but traffic was too heavy. Before he could reach Guero, the dog
was struck and killed.
“Let me give you a public
apology right now on behalf of the city of Houston,” Mayor Annise Parker said
at the council meeting. “I don’t know what airhead — there’s another word in my
mind but I’m not going to say it — would throw, you wouldn’t put a kid on the
side of the road. You shouldn’t put someone’s pet on the side of the road.”
The report is one of many
recently involving family dogs killed by police officers, seemingly for no
reason.
The Houston Police Department
says an investigation into what happened and why Guero was dumped on the road
could take an astounding six months.