Detroit police to pay $100,000
for shooting a dog
John Wisely, Detroit Free Press
The City of Detroit will pay a
pet owner $100,000 after a police officer shot his dog dead while it was
chained up beside his home.
Babycakes, a Dogue de Bordeaux,
was on a 10-foot leash beside Darryl Lindsay's home in the 11600 block of
Strathmoor in January 2015 when Detroit police surrounded the house. They were
there to question Lindsay, though he was never charged with a crime, according
to his lawsuit filed last year in U.S. District Court.
Officer Darrell Dawson killed the
dog in a shooting captured on police video, according to the lawsuit.
"Dash camera video shows
Defendant Dawson walk toward Babycakes in her driveway to a position just
beyond the reach of Babycakes’ steel cable leash, pause, aim and shoot her
twice with his department-issued ... 40-caliber handgun, striking Babycakes in
the chest area," according to the suit.
The dog died of the injuries.
Dawson also can be heard on audio recordings notifying dispatchers that he was
going to "take the dog down."
Dawson was attempting to enter
the back yard of the home when he encountered the dog, but other officers were
able to get there by simply hopping the fence on the other side of the house,
according to the suit. Lindsay asked officers if it he could bring the dog
inside before it was shot.
"Defendant’s dash cam audio
recordings reflect a female police officer remarking that 'that dog got shot
and had nothing to do with it!'" the suit said.
"On top of that, police
never saw or could even describe the person that they were looking for that
day," said Lindsay's lawyer, Chris Olsen of Royal Oak.
It's unclear if Dawson was
disciplined by the department for the shooting, though records Olsen obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act show Dawson described seeing a "large
brown dog" and that he "was verbally counseled ... regarding other
avenues of approach one can take when entering private property for exterior
searches.”
The city agreed to the settlement
in November. Olsen said he expects his client to get paid in the next month to
six weeks.
The city did not immediately
respond to a request for comment on the settlement.
Contact John Wisely: 313-222-6825
or jwisely@freepress.com. On Twitter @jwisely.
wait for it....wait for it ...............
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