San Diego, CA Ian Anderson, of San Diego, is heartbroken after his 6-year-old service dog, Burberry, was shot and killed by a police officer outside his home in Pacific Beach on Sunday morning.

The beautiful and beloved Pitbull began barking around 5:30 am when the police incorrectly arrived at Anderson's home for "what appeared to be" a domestic disturbance. The police had reportedly went to the wrong address.

"For six years Ian Anderson raised his beloved dog, it took just one second for a police man's bullet to kill him," NBC reporter Omari Fleming lamented.

The police had knocked on Anderson's door and when Burberry ran outside, the dog stopped barking as one officer reached down and pet him, Anderson says.

Unfortunately, the other officer on the scene had an extreme reaction to the beautiful grey dog who reportedly worked with children with down syndrome, and began yelling at the animal, demanding that he go inside. The dog became startled, and the officer drew his weapon and ended Burberry's happy life.

"[The officer] jumped back, went this way, drew his weapon," Anderson told NBC. "Boom. Shot right in the head and he was done. He was dead."

Anderson laid outside grieving for two hours with the body of his pet, and friend, who had helped him through his anxiety while coping with the loss of his father.

"He was the best dog in the entire world, I would do anything to have him back right now, absolutely anything." Anderson tearfully explained.

The San Diego Police Department issued a statement which noticeably lacked any sort of apology for the grief and pain they have caused.

"The preservation of life is our top priority and this includes the lives of animals. This incident is currently being investigated as any Officer Involved Shooting would be to assure proper procedures were followed. Any further comments prior to the completion of the investigation would simply be premature."

A non-profit called Dog Encounter Task Force at San Diego AWOL is devoted to training police officers to safely work with dogs and reduce the number of animals killed by law enforcement. They have stated that they previously reached out and offered their services for free, to no avail.

"There seems to be no question here that this incident did not have to happen. It really makes no difference if this dog was a service dog or not. Our organization has been in conversation with the San Diego Police Department for over 16 months to get them into our TOTALLY FREE Safe Dog Encounter Training. As yet they have not seen the importance of this training for their agency. We stand at the ready to make sure that our officers can safely deal with dog encounters while keeping everyone else safe too " our dogs and innocent bystanders."

They continued on to say,

"Our experiences tell us that law enforcement is just like everyone else in that when they know better they do better. Within the training of most law enforcement agencies in the country they actually have no safe dog encounter training. For example they are not even trained that the very 'command presence' posture they are taught in the academy, for use with humans and works well with mountain lions and bears, is viewed as confrontational and highly threatening by dogs. But without safe dog encounter training they have not learned that part yet. Many are taught in the academy that pepper spray does not work with dogs when it is proven that it does! We teach then how to properly read a dog's body language and signals in order to accurately the situation and how to use their own body language to negotiate with a dog in order to diffuse a situation. For those situations where actual action is required we teach them no less than 19 non-lethal ways to keep a dog encounter safe for everyone. Does that mean that dogs will never get shot. No it does not and we realize that. We just want to stop the unnecessary dog shootings and we can through the right kind of training."

Puppycide is such a huge problem that we have an entire section dedicated to it here at The Free Thought Project. Please write the San Diego Police a note asking them to accept the generous offer for free training and save some lives.

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This breaks my heart to see this.. I have a service animal, I literally have had since she was 6 weeks old she turns 12 on the 15th. The training alone is thousands of dollars.
I had her trained to help with Domestic Violence victims and trauma victims. I am not sure what I would do if her life was ended this way.

Again just saddens me.

anytime the police kill animals out of fear/ignorance saddens me... the way this is worded sounds like the cop just wanted to kill it...

i would be in jail , cause i would have shot the cop <shrug>

yea, they tend to frown on that...

the second biggest pisser on this is that the SDPD didn't bother to apologize or show any remorse whatsoever...

Heart breaking...

There is footage online (wont link it obviously) of the encounter...its shaky and no sound. But....IMO, looks like the second cop freaked out....possibly upsetting the dog. Still couldnt tell if the dog was agitated or just playing...like I mentioned, footage isnt that great. Search Youtube and it can be found.

Ditto.

On topic: its a messed up state of affairs,
when a department as advanced as *smirk* San Diego
can't get their chit together enough to send barney f'n fife, to the correct address.

My heart goes out to the dog's human, for the loss of his beloved friend.

...
On shooting the cop.
There are at least six people on this site,
three of whom have some medical training,
who can verify that my body bares the scars
of multiple gunshot wounds.

I fear... Nothing

Shot the cop?
I'd have used the s.o.b. for target practice,
until someone took me down.

So sad!!

Oh this is do sad. And seems to be pure ignorance! My heart goes out to that family who IMO.. lost a loyal family member.


One of my sisters has a German Shepherd as a service dog. And when she is not well or sick or upset. * She has seizures * . Her dog sits by her & barks if ANYONE other than her husband tries to get near her. This dog knows what he is doing... his job.

Our well trained, tax funded, protect and serve police officers doing what they do best....terrorizing innocent victims by screwing up yet again

damn Keystone Cops!

Officers who are so unstable should not be in law enforcement.

RIP Burberry

i think a bigger problem is the higher ups that justify these kinds of things...

Next all law enforcement will become nationalized (already moving in that direction thanks to a new "program" put forth by BHO) and nobody can travel without "papers" as the TSA is promoted to National Security Enforcement over all modes of transportation, and unconstitutional check points become more common place.

This is already happening in areas around Colorado, Washington State and elsewhere due to new state marijuana laws with no change in federal laws. Right now is is not the norm, but we all know how fast that can change under this admin..... and he has less than 2 years to make it happen.

The future is not looking good, but it has been declining for over a decade, or since 9/11.

John Oliver just did (this last Sunday) an HBO special in Russia with Snowden in which he brought up the "re-authorization" of the Patriot Act coming up June 1st. It had a comedic spin of course, but was actually pretty well done and raised some good points!

Google it

and how did nazi-ism start? just like this...