Paws up, don’t shoot: Activists
say cops shooting dogs is a problem
Protest march on state Capitol
planned for October 25
By Raheem F. Hosseini
Law-enforcement agencies don’t
actually use dogs in target practice, but activists say better training is
needed to stop the inadvertent killing of animals during police action.
Jayme Kathleen Francis was
drowsing off in her bedroom one evening last spring, when a swarm of cops
mistook her duplex for the scene of a fight and entered.
Wrapped in her arms was Copper,
a 6-year-old boxer who liked to dance on his hind legs and wave his nub in the
air. Informed of the officers’ presence, Francis roused from her sleep to put
her dog into the backyard before dealing with the confusion. He never made it
that far.
As Copper padded a few feet in
front of her, Francis heard a loud crack and saw what looked like crimson
glitter wisp through the air.
A veteran Modesto Police
Department officer had fired a bullet into Copper’s face.
The dog would later die on a
veterinarian’s table, another four-legged victim of a police shooting—something
critics say is a needlessly routine occurrence.
“Once I looked into it, I
realized how common it was,” Francis told SN&R. “It turned my stomach.”
A nationwide animal rights
group with a chapter based in Sacramento, called Freeze Don’t Shoot-California,
is hoping to tap into that disgust during an October 25 march on the state
Capitol. Francis will be among the speakers calling for reform in officer
training and accountability.
There are no solid estimates on
how many pets are injured or killed each year by peace officers. In the past
six years, 22 dogs have been shot by sheriff’s department personnel in the
unincorporated areas of Sacramento County, though none this year. Sheriff’s
departments in El Dorado and Yolo counties didn’t respond to requests for data.
The Elk Grove Police department said it doesn’t track how many animals officers
shoot.
Then again, agencies aren’t
required to report how many humans they shoot, to say nothing of four-legged
casualties. In lieu of a dead dog database, pissed-off owners have turned to
social media to share their grisly accounts and online media reports.
In May of last year, a
California Highway Patrol officer killed two huskies—one of them accidentally—after
receiving reports of wolves attacking a deer and running into people’s yards in
Carmichael, news outlets reported. The canines’ owner had been searching for
his pets for two days, and says they escaped his apartment while chasing an
intruder but weren’t violent.
In November 2012, an officer
with the Sacramento Police Department’s SWAT team shot a dog that reportedly
charged while serving a search warrant at home in Del Paso Heights.
In May of that same year,
another Sacramento police officer shot and killed two dogs after entering a
backyard in the Oak Park neighborhood to investigate a drug case. Police say
the dogs charged the officer, but a neighbor said she didn’t believe one of the
hounds to be aggressive, reported CBS Sacramento.
Animal activists aren’t ready
to say that cops are shooting more dogs than before. But they do believe these
encounters are avoidable and sometimes unprompted.
“I don’t want to be a victim of
an officer cutting across my property or getting the wrong address and
destroying my pets because they don’t know any other means of confronting a
dog,” said Rae Kelly, a Sacramento dog owner and the statewide organizer for
Freeze Don’t Shoot, which began nationally in June.
Policy makers have finally
gotten the message.
Earlier this year, state
Senator Ron Calderon introduced a bill to require canine training for officers,
but it’s unlikely to advance because of the author’s unrelated court troubles.
The state agency that writes the rulebook for cops is already developing its
own pet-centric training curriculum, however.
Representatives of the state
Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training said they met in August
with members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Los
Angeles to discuss creating a four-hour block of instruction. According to a
monthly POST report, the training would help officers better assess the family
dogs they encounter, “and correspondingly modify their own actions based on the
relational needs of the dog.”
The Citrus Heights Police Department,
which has operated its own animal control division the last few years, has
already developed non-lethal contingencies for confronting dogs during warrant
searches and other operations. One of the most effective—and least
deadly—methods, it turns out, is a fire extinguisher. “A lot of times, that
scares the dog or will deter it,” said Sgt. Mike Wells, a department spokesman.
“We absolutely don’t want to be shooting a dog.”
As a result, Citrus Heights
police have only shot one dog in the department’s eight-year existence.
In the case of Copper, Modesto
police acknowledge they entered the wrong duplex. According to a police
incident summary, officers entered through a sliding glass door after
announcing their presence. They say a suspicious male retreated to the back
while refusing to identify himself.
“While trying to get to the
male, an officer was confronted by an aggressive dog,” the summary reads. “The
male was asked to take control of the dog. The dog continued to chase the
officer. The dog was shot by the officer.”
Francis contends otherwise. As
she led Copper toward the backyard’s glass-panel door, she said she heard a
man’s voice call out, “Dog! Dog!” And then the gunshot. She said there were
several signs that animals resided there—including leashes near the front
porch, an unlocked security screen that provided a clear view into the
residence and a literal sign by the door saying there were dogs inside. “They
had to walk through their potty area,” she added.
Francis consulted a lawyer a
few months later, but didn’t pursue it. “It’s not going to bring my Copper
back.”
Her daughter did file an
official complaint with the Modesto Police Department. In a response letter
dated August 13, 2013, police Chief Galen Carroll wrote that the involved officer
was “exonerated” of wrongdoing following “an extensive investigation.”
Francis said no one interviewed
her or any of the other people inside her home who witnessed the shooting.
Citing pending litigation,
Modesto police spokeswoman Heather Graves declined to release details of the
investigation. “I can say, however, that our hearts go out to the family for
their loss, as we understand pets are often a member of the family,” she wrote
in an email.
The incident left its troubling
imprint. Francis finds herself wondering whether police deliberately entered
her home to kill the dog she referred to as her “grandson.” She also worries
about the special-needs son who witnessed the bloody aftermath and has been
unable to process the loss.
“Now he will absolutely … hate
cops,” Francis said of her 10-year-old.