Puppycide

Radley Balko
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Infuriating story from San Diego’s alternative weekly.

Around noon on Tuesday, Dec. 2, Peeples was watching TV at home when he heard a knock at the front door. When he looked out the door’s top window, he saw a group of men standing on his porch wearing jeans and T-shirts, a couple of them looking a little ratty. To get a better look, he went to a side window and peeked through the drawn blinds. “Honestly, they looked like they were transients,” he said.

The men, it ends up, were undercover narcotics officers who were there on a complaint about drug activity at that address—Peeples was later told that it had to do with a “chemical smell.” Peeples said the men—he estimates there were six—never announced who they were.

Peeples waited until they circled back to the front of his house, at which point he opened his back door to investigate. That’s when his dog, a three-year-old Staffy named Eygpt ran out. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, except that one of the police officers had left the backyard gate open. The dog ran out, and down Peeple’s driveway toward the officers, at which point they shot it three times. Even the police concede the dog never attacked. They shot it as it was running toward them.

It only gets worse from there. The police then arrested Peeples on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon—the weapon being his now dying dog. Peeples says they then euthanized his dog, despite his explicit instructions not to.

Animal Control spokesperson Dan DeSousa said Peeples’ verbal authorization to euthanize Egypt was witnessed by a second officer, but Peeples insists he never gave permission. “Do not kill my dog; do everything you can to save my dog,” he remembers yelling. When he saw Chris Victor, his neighbor, he asked him to make sure Egypt was kept alive. Victor said he called animal control to let them know he’d cover any cost for Egypt’s care, but by the time his call got through, Egypt had been euthanized. DeSousa said the dog was put down immediately after arriving.

The police didn’t find the meth lab they were presumably looking for. They did apparently find a misdemeanor amount of marijuana in Peeple’s garage—marijuana that, according to the article, was “so old that it disintegrated upon contact.”

These stories seem to be popping up with increasing frequency. Three weeks ago, police in Waldorf, Maryland shot a family dog in front of two small children while attempting to serve papers on a man who no longer lived at the address. They claim the dog charged them. Last month, police in Indianapolis put nine bullets in a German Shepherd. They ignored warning signs about the dog posted on the property before walking in to serve a warrant on a man who hadn’t lived at the address in years. Just last week week, police in Gwinnett County, Georgia shot and killed a Dalmatian after entering the wrong garage to serve a warrant in a gang-related case.

Milwaukee resident Virginia Villo is suing that city for the 2004 police shooting of her lab-springer spaniel mix, Bubba. As part of her lawsuit, she requested police reports of every dog killed by Milwaukee police over a nine-year period. The request turned up 434 dead puppy reports, or about one every seven-and-a-half days.

See more puppycide stories from recent months here, here, and here (Go to website link below). Or browse stories from the last couple of years here.

Note too that none of these more recent incidents were associated with drug raids (that’s a different problem). They’re cases where the police walked or drove onto private property (usually at the wrong address), were confronted by the dog that lived on that property, interepreted—correctly or not—the dog’s barks or gestures to be threatening, then shot the animal. Last August, video surfaced of a case in Oklahoma where an officer pulled into a woman named Tammy Christopher’s driveway to ask directions. When Christopher’s Wheaton Terrier ran out of the house to great the officer (the dog appears to be bounding in the video)—still on Christopher’s property—the officer shoots the dog dead. Christopher released the video to a local news station when the police department wouldn’t listen to her complaint.

What’s troubling is how often in these stories the police officer’s first reaction is to fire his weapon at the animal. I suppose that reaction might be understandable if the dog is, say, a pit bull, given that type of dog’s (not entirely deserved) reputation. But black labs? Dalmatians? Springer spaniels? A Jack Russell? Something’s clearly amiss when a police officer can stroll onto the private property of someone who’s doing nothing illegal, be confronted by a dog who’s merely doing what dogs do—defending his territory—shoot the dog dead, and get nothing but full support from his superiors. Moreover, many of these shootings have happened in neighborhoods, inside of homes, and in a few cases, directly in front of children. You’d think there would be some public safety concerns, too.

Police departments should be training officers how to deal with dogs in ways other than filling them full of bullets. Cops should be taught, for example, how to tell a charging dog from a bounding one; an angry dog from a barking but playful one; and that a curious or territorial bark is much less threatening than a snarl. Mailmen, firemen, paramedics, and the rest of us non-badge-wearing citizens manage to visit private homes and deal with the dogs that may reside in them without resorting gunfire. It’s odd that not insignificant number of police officers can’t.

There are plenty of ways of safely dealing with even a large, aggressive dog that fall far short of shooting it. I don’t know what percentage of police departments offer this sort of training, but it seems clear that quite a few of them don’t.

http://www.theagitator.com/2008/12/23/puppycide-16/

This is a really hard one to ponder and embrace. I'm an animal lover. It's very sad.

On the other hand, EMTs, mailmen, etc.... when they have to deal with dogs, there's usually no negative circumstance involved and the people being approached are more likely to assist in restraining, not hinder assistance or order their animal to sic. As to breeds, heck, even my daughter's otherwise docile chihuahua turned violent when my daughter was attacked by a predator, so breed shouldn't really be considered a factor.

I don't know how the police could deal better with this situation on top of everything else they have to handle, but I hope they somehow can find a solution as it is VERY SAD!!!

I look at it like this, these cops all have pepper spray and tasers, so why go for the firearm first?

Also, All of us have been around dogs that are less than friendly, so why is shoot first an option?

Another thought, If I pull the trigger on a police dog I'd be charged with killing an officer, but these cops can kill dogs with impunity?

As sad as the above stories are they pale in comparison to the horrors that happened during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. There were huge piles of dogs that were herded into a fenced in yard of a school in the French Quarter, then the police shot them all to death. The atrocities carried out by police on our furry friends have to stop!

they should remove the officer from the force. why is what they did any different than the throwing the puppy off a cliff as alleged of the marine they discharged.

When I worked for the animal shelter we had a lot of cases where animals were abused/killed by abusive spouses. The message is clear, "you could be next".

This is just another travesty when you give Cavemen guns and a false idea of authority! Ill bet there calling in a "pit bull" when in reality its probably a dachshund mix, The idea of police as we have all come to know is nothing but a legally protected form of La Cosa nostra, the mafia, Its time to scrap all the excess BS "authority" and get down to what REALLY MATTERS! The war on drugs, was the dumbest thing since the Big Mouth Billy Bass and it should have ENDED ALONG TIME AGO, because its a never ending deposit of my tax dollors and its waisting more lives on both sides of the issue!