They all said the same thing:

While training and protocol will vary from city to city, county to county, state to state, one thing holds true across the board. A police officer is to go into a situation with the idea of coming out of it with the least possible use of violence and the safest outcome. Always look for a resolution that involves the least amount of force that can be reasonably used to protect the public and the officer. Officers are required to consider the safety of the criminal as well.

In other words, avoid escalating the situation. De-escalation is the name of the game.

None of my officer friends considered pulling, aiming, and firing a gun as the first choice to a safe resolution of a potentially unsafe situation involving DOGS. [Meth heads tweeting, waving serious firepower, now that was another story.]

Dogs don’t carry guns. They can do horrible damage, even maul a human being to death, but they don’t come running at police with guns in their paws.

The general concensus was that these shootings were avoidable.

One of my friends did have a sad story to tell – they went into a domestic violence situation, and there was a scared yappy little mutt running around the house. At one point, the abuser went after one of the cops. The yappy scared little mutt got tangled in the cop’s legs and tripped him. The abuser jumped on the fallen cop and stabbed him. His partner got the abuser in cuffs and the stabbed cop’s injury was not serious, only needed a couple of stitches. But even in this situation, an angry, drunk, abusive bruiser of a POS yelling and slamming into things, chasing his girlfriend, kids crying in the corner, yappy little dog under foot – neither of the cops pulled a gun to shoot the dog. Hell, neither of them pulled a gun on the drunk abuser! They used batons and training.

So far, I haven’t had one comment from an officer that agrees with or defends these shootings. They all responded with contempt and disgust when told about the behavior of the officers involved in these shootings.

Oh, and the lovely lady cop who kicked the injured cat? They all agreed that, while it was in fact her duty to move the cars off the road and out of the way of traffic, there was no reason or justification to be brutal about the cat, to toss it in the box, or to kick the box to the curb. [The sargeant sarcastically pointed out that it would have been easier to put the cat in the box and the box in the car. All that tossing and dumping and kicking was a waste of energy, poor public service, and even added to the danger of the situation, as the cop was focusing her attention on the cat instead of on the traffic. When he was done being sarcastic about what a rotten job she did, he got serious and said that if she had been his officer, he would have had her up on disciplinary action.]

It used to be that bad cops could get away with beating up on minorities and nobody turned a hair. Now they get in trouble for that. So I guess they have channeled their badness into shooting the family pet.

I really don’t want these guys on the streets, with badges and guns. That’s just scary…how do you know if the cop running down the street is one of the 99% of sane cops who isn’t going to shoot your dog because it’s barking in the back yard? How do you protect your dog if one of the 1% of trigger happy pigs is the one answering a report of a possible burglary next store?

In a tragic example of what happens when proper police protocol is not followed, two pet Labrador Retrievers were shot at last Thursday by officers from the Memphis Police Department when the canines used their dog door to see who had come into their yard. The officers entered the private property to investigate a possible burglary because the homeowner’s alarm system had been triggered. Although one dog was shot and the other ran away, the dogs’ owner, who was not home at the time, was not informed by the authorities that anything unusual had taken place, leaving her to discover quite a frightening scene when she returned home hours later.

“Police shootings of family dogs are a huge problem nationwide,” says Dr. Randall Lockwood, ASPCA Senior Vice President of Anti-Cruelty Field Services. “In general, in at least one-third to one-half of all incidents where a police officer fires a gun, the target is a dog. In almost all cases, just a sharp verbal command or a confident display of authority is enough to deter a dog attack. The easiest way for police officers to do this would be to raise their batons in a threatening way. Failing that, pepper spray may be used. Shooting is very rarely justifiable.”

The Memphis Police Department has received regular training in animal handling and dog confrontations over the last decade, but that does not seem to have stemmed the rate of anti-protocol dog shootings by its officers, which is significantly higher in Memphis, per capita, than in major cities like New York and Los Angeles. “It’s ironic—Memphis is ahead of most other police departments in the nation in that they have official use-of-force policies for encounters with animals—but the real-world effectiveness of these policies depend much on internal support and enforcement and holding people accountable,” adds Dr. Lockwood.

Last week’s shooting of the two Labs comes just one week after a similar incident in which a Boxer mix was also shot in his home by a Memphis policeman. The Memphis Police Department is investigating both incidents, and all three dogs are now back home with their families, recovering from their ordeals.

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A postal worker doesn’t usually have to worry if a meth head will kill him while he is spraying a barking dog with repellent. Animal control officers deal with animals of the four legged variety who might bite, not the two legged variety who might shoot.

I would be curious to find out if there had been other calls of possible criminal activity in the teens’ neighborhood, before the call to his house. Here’s this kid just sitting with friends, but the cops don’t know that when they burst in. Did they think they were going into a a meth or crack or gang house? If they had been dealing with that kind of problem in the neighborhood recently, they might have thought this was another potentially deadly situation.

Something similar happened on my block. I live in a nice neighborhood but a couple of houses down, one of the kids was selling drugs. For a couple of months after the cops raided the place, every time anyone else made a call, the cops came on tense with lots of back up. They didn’t know if the drugs had been moved to another house on the block. I called an ambulance after I sliced myself trying to open a box, and cops showed up with it! They were making sure I hadn’t been stabbed by a drug dealer! After a while, things settled back down.

Of course, they didn’t shoot my dogs. But one of them was cranky that I wouldn’t let them in until I put the dogs in the bedroom.

And the poor woman who’s dog was shot and left in the yard – had the cops just dealt with a crook who set his/her abused fighting dog to attack and maul the cops while the crook got away? Had local postmen/women complained about difficult or aggressive dogs in the neighborhood, and the cops didn’t know which dogs had the complaints and which ones didn’t? So they go in thinking “there are aggressive dogs in one of these yards” and then the poor dogs bark and the cops shoot.

They still should have left a note, phoned a message, and taken the dog to the vet.

These would be the kind of situations where I could see a police officer shooting the dog because a stone cold killer was using the dog to maul and slow down the cops while the killer – or gangbanger or drug dealer or wife beater or whatever – anyway, a cop shoots the dog because the POS has trained the dog to attack and maul. So the cop has to shoot. And the dog pays the price. And the POS gets probation.

Neither of these stories read that way to me. But I’m not a cop. I’m an animal welfare worker and I’m working very hard to figure out a reason why a cop would shoot a dog. I have great respect for cops and I’ve only met a couple who were assholes. So I am working hard to figure out a reason why a cop would shoot a dog. Working….working…working…not getting anywhere…

I would be devestated and furious if this happened to my dog. Of course, my dog is an Italian Greyhound, good luck convincing anyone that dog is a threat to anything or anybody!

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder just what the cops saw when they came on the scene. Had they been in situations where they didn’t pull a gun and got badly mauled? Where they trained to shoot first? Or were they really just trigger happy jerks?

And of course, there is that lovely policewoman who kicked the box with the injured cat. That was definately a class act. I’ve been thinking very hard about what she must have seen. Hmm. Two cars blocking the road. Could be a road hazzard, someone might not see the flashing blinkers and ram right into the back of one of those cars. So as a police officer, of course she made them move the cars off the road. It might have annoyed them that she put road safety ahead of the cat, but having them move their cars was in fact her job. Now, about kicking the box with the injured cat…hmmm…thinking, thinking, thinking really really hard…nope, I got nothing. Can’t think of any situation or scenario to justify kicking the cat. Even if the cat was “already dying.”

Glad she don’t work in my neck of the woods.

Again, if you know police officers, please get their input. I’ve already emailed the cops I know. I’ll tell you what they say.

I liked Bolton’s comment that postal workers deal with dogs on a daily basis. I think that hits the heart of the problem.

Other public workers deal with unknown dogs several times a day. Animal control officers handle vicious dogs – not barking or approaching dogs, but truly vicious animals – several times a day with control sticks, nets, ropes and dog repellent sprays. The Animal Control officers that do carry guns pull their sticks and spray first.

Police pepper sprays, tasers, repellents, even batons are all a better first response.

In that second when an officer doesn’t know if the dog is going to attack, or if there is an armed burglar coming up behind the dog to shoot after the dog mauls – well, I can understand an officer taking protective steps. But they can just as easily shoot over the dog or in the ground in front of it. If the dog is truly an aggressive animal and keeps coming, then the officer may have no choice but to shoot the dog. Though again, Animal Control officers do this all day with nothing but a stick and a rope.

But a dog that is just acting like a dog – approaching, barking, etc – will usually flinch away from the noise and smell of a gunshot. {unless it’s a hunting dog, in which case they may respond to the warning shot by looking for a downed bird!}

I know that sometimes an officer has a second or less to determine the danger level of a situation, but most of the cases described here sound like there were several seconds in which an officer could have pulled spray, taser, baton, or even fired a warning shot. To shoot to maim or kill right off the bat – are there really that many situations that justify that?

Is there anyone else on this blog who knows a police officer? We have a couple of former police officers here at work. One of our Animal Cruelty investigators is a former cop. I’m going to ask them what their training was regarding this type of situation. I’m curious to see what other police officers have to say about this type of thing. I’m betting a lot of them would handle this type of situation differently. I’ll ask around and get back to you.

If you know officers, please ask them as well. Let’s see what they think. Let’s see what kind of training they are given, if any, to handle unknown pets in potentially threatening situations. If they are trained to shoot first – that needs to be addressed.