By Richard Webner and Anya
Sostek / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The police officer tried
everything to avoid shooting the dog, Regina Falk said.
On a day in April 2012, the pit
bull, which belonged to a neighbor, lunged at the officer three times on the
street near Mrs. Falk's house in Aliquippa. Each time, the officer backed away.
Finally, the dog was so close that he had to shoot.
"He had no choice,"
she said. "It was either take the dog or let the dog take him."
The incident that Mrs. Falk
witnessed is p
art of a growing national issue over police confrontations with
family pets.
Videos of pet dogs killed by
police regularly go viral, with several receiving millions of hits on YouTube.
Deaths are also tracked and publicized through social media and on Facebook
pages such as Dogs Shot By Police.
Randall Lockwood, senior vice
president with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
has been studying the issue for about 15 years. Nearly every day, he said, he
runs into a new case of a police shooting of a pet dog.
As Pittsburgh continues to
mourn Rocco, the K-9 officer killed in the line of duty last month, some are
focusing attention on other dogs killed in the course of police work.
"If you shoot a police
dog, it's a crime," said Patrick Reasonover, producer of a documentary
tracking the issue, "Puppycide," that is now in production. "If
police shoot your dog, it's fine."
One week ago, a police officer
investigating a burglary in Glen Burnie, Md., killed a pet dog in a family's
front yard while the dog's owner was in the basement preparing for a Super Bowl
party. That incident has sparked a Facebook page for the deceased Chesapeake
Bay retriever that has more than 11,000 followers and hundreds of passionate
comments.
The Pittsburgh Citizen Police
Review Board has received four complaints since 2011 from people whose dogs
have been killed by police, executive director Elizabeth Pittinger said.
Ms. Pittinger said she was not
allowed to release details of any of the complaints because none was granted a
public hearing -- though not all of the cases are closed. The gist of the
complaints, she said, is that police have killed their dogs "for a reason
that wasn't satisfactory to them."
Complaints to the Citizen
Police Review Board are granted a public hearing depending on "whether or
not the evidence supports the allegation," she said.
The incidents raise the
question of how police officers should react when they run into an aggressive
dog, and what qualifies as aggressive. Some of the encounters occur after
police officers mistakenly enter the wrong home, Mr. Lockwood said, further
complicating the issue.
Most police departments don't
train officers to deal with pet dogs, said Thomas Aveni, the executive director
of the Police Policy Studies Council, a New Hampshire-based think-tank that
researches the use of force by police. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is among
them, spokeswoman Diane Richard said, limiting its canine-related training to
handling police dogs.
The issue of training police to
handle pet dogs is rarely even discussed, Mr. Aveni said. "There's no
training with regards to what to do or what not to do," he said.
The ASPCA has tried to remedy
that by offering training to officers in the New York City area, Mr. Lockwood
said. The organization tries to strengthen bonds between police departments and
animal control agencies so they can work together in situations in which
officers might encounter dogs.
Mr. Reasonover, the documentary
producer, said he believes the issue arises from both the increased role that
pets play in Americans' lives and the greater visibility of law enforcement.
"Police officers, for a
variety of reasons -- the war on drugs, war on terrorism -- have stepped up
their presence in our lives as well," he said. "You have these two
groups meeting and then the police officers end up encountering family
pets."
In deciding whether to shoot a
dog, police officers should use the "deadly force" doctrine, Mr.
Aveni and Mr. Lockwood agreed, killing the dog only if the officer or others
are in serious danger. The difficulty is how to determine quickly whether a dog
poses a threat.
"The problem we and other
groups have is it's a low standard," Mr. Lockwood said.
Mr. Aveni has first-hard
experience with the issue -- he said he was bitten while entering suspects'
homes during his time as a police officer. He suggested taking the dog's size
and temperament into account, as well as its surroundings. A dog that lives in
a house where drugs are sold is more likely to be trained to be vicious than
one in a home, he said.
Before resorting to a handgun,
police officers should consider blasting dogs with pepper spray, waving a baton
at them, hitting them with a baton, or throwing obstacles in their way, Mr.
Aveni said. Tasers don't work well because they are oriented to strike
vertically instead of horizontally -- a dog on four legs. Mr. Aveni also said
many dogs aren't large enough for the two electrodes to latch onto.
"If they're given one good
whack ... they'll respect the baton," Mr. Aveni said. "If it's
swinging, they'll maintain their distance."
Concerns about dog deaths and a
lack of training don't mean there aren't dangerous dogs sometimes deployed
against police, said Mr. Reasonover.
"Our documentary doesn't
presume foul for killing all dogs -- there very may well be instances where
they have to shoot the dog," he said. "It just seems like right now
there's no protocol -- they just kill them willy nilly."
Some states have instituted
measures to help police handle aggressive dogs. Maryland has put catch-poles --
lassoes used to leash dogs -- in all its police cars, Mr. Lockwood said.
After a highly publicized dog
death by police in Colorado, the state last year passed the "Dog
Protection Act," requiring police departments to develop training programs
on encounters with dogs in the line of duty.
In some cases, cities have been
sued by the owners of dogs slain by police. In 2006, the city of Costa Mesa,
Calif., paid a family $225,000 to settle a lawsuit over the killing of its pit
bull by a police officer, according to the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Lockwood said
he has seen dozens of cases in which cities paid five- and six-figure
settlements to dog owners.
Reflecting on the shooting she
witnessed in 2012, Mrs. Falk sympathized with the police officer by relating a
story of her own.
After one of her dogs attacked
her, she put it down three days later.
Still, as a dog-lover, she
understood why the pit bull's owners were upset after the shooting.
"I would be very
upset," she said. "But once they showed me the video, I would have
understood."
Richard Webner:
rwebner@post-gazette.com or 412-263-4903. Anya Sostek: asostek@post-gazette.com
or 412-263-1308.
