Dog Shot By Police

Several years ago, I was visiting my parents and my sister was there. We were sitting in the living room talking and the news was on in the background. One of the day’s stories was that the police were chasing a fleeing robbery suspect. The suspect jumped a fence into a yard where there was a big dog. A policeman followed and was confronted by the dog. The policeman shot the dog, then took the suspect into custody.
This created quite a discussion. Of course, I saw the side of the officer and my sister saw the side of the dog owner. It may not have seemed like it to her, but I listened to my sister’s opinion. As a supervisor, I always used this discussion as a teaching tool to my troops.
As a cop, if I’m chasing a fleeing felon, I have every right to chase him wherever he goes. If he runs to his own house or anyone else’s and I’m in what the court deems "hot pursuit," then I’m chasing him in to make the arrest. No warrant is needed and I have violated no rights. Now during that, I’m confronted by a growling dog and that dog attacks me, I have every right to protect myself.
As a homeowner, my dog is locked up in my yard and someone comes in, no matter what reason, and my dog protects my property by attacking the uninvited guest. That guest better not kill my dog. Not even if it’s a cop.
Now for a cop, the trick here, is to have gone over this scenario in your mind long before it ever happens. That’s training, and it’s a fact that in situations where there is little time to think, you will revert back to your training.
An animal control officer (dog catcher) gave me a little insight into animal behavior. First of all, dog’s bark. That’s how they communicate. Most dogs, like people are protective of their domain. Even a scared dog will attack if he feels cornered. Don’t worry just because a dog is barking and coming towards you, but if he’s growling and is chomping his choppers, you’d better watch out.
Most police officers (in southern California anyway) are fairly well educated and were hired because of their ability to multi-task. Talk on the radio while driving for instance and at the same time putting up the windows so you can activate the siren and the lights. Keeping your "head on a swivel" while watching the suspects for tell, tell movements of certain activity. You get what I mean.
So my training was not to tell an officer exactly how to act. There are laws, rules, and regs of what you can and can’t do. What I trained them, was to see all sides and look for all possibilities before the incident so when and if it happened, they could revert back to that training and do not only what was legally right, but what they felt was also morally right.
I’m happy to say that in my career as a police supervisor, no one shot a dog on my shift.