District Dogs in Danger When Police Come Knocking

It's not an unlikely scenario. You lose your keys and climb into your own house through an open window.

But this minor inconvienence took a dark turn on March 10 for Carlos Hernandez, his father Isabel Moreno and their German Shepherd, Sam. A neighbor didn't recognize Hernandez and called the police. When officers arrived, Sam ran out the door as it opened and barked at them. One of the officers shot Sam and handcuffed Hernandez and Moreno.

Sam died 10 days later due to complications from his injuries.

Sam's case, which was reported in The Washington Post, isn't unique in the District of Columbia. In 2007, the last year data are available, officers shot at 12 dogs in the District. Officers have fired at six dogs, including Sam, between January and March, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

"I can't say for sure if they're happening more or not, but we're definitely hearing about them more," said Adam Goldfarb, the director of the Pets at Risk program at the Humane Society of the United States. “I think people are getting more upset about it, and rightfully so. I would be mad if it happened to me.” 

The 2007 data come from an annual report from the Metropolitan Police Department as part of a 1999 agreement with the Department of Justice, which requires an independent investigation into any use of force with a weapon by a District officer. Use-of-force cases involving dogs and other non-firearm-related cases involving people are otherwise investigated internally. All use of force investigations are included in the report.

The number of pets killed by D.C. police are high compared to New York City, said Ed Mulrenin, an animal-protection activist and attorney in Washington. Despite having four times the number of police officers, 30 times the number of dogs and 16 times the human population, the number of dogs killed per capita in New York City was half of the number killed in Washington, Mulrenin said.

The D.C. department's dangerous dog policy states an officer should take steps to “remove danger from the animal” by using non-lethal methods, like pepper spray, until a representative from the Animal Control Agency can arrive on the scene. But department policy also says an officer can use his firearm to defend himself from death or serious injury, or to put down an animal that is dangerous or seriously injured.

“The police can shoot any dog it wants to as long as the police are willing to say 'I feared for my safety,'" said Mulrenin. "That's all they have to say. No matter what the motive."

Experts agree more training is necessary to avoid needlessly killing pets, and say police are either not properly trained to recognize aggressive behavior in dogs or are afraid of them.

An American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals study shows 95 percent of aggressive dog cases can be diffused with non-violent tactics like standing still, averting eye contact with the dog, using pepper spray or putting the officer's baton in the dog's mouth, Mulrenin said. Shouting at the dog, waving a gun at it and backing away provoke a dog into behaving in a manner that people think is aggressive, he said.

Goldfarb echoed a need to train police to read canine body language to avoid incidents like Sam's. He also said police should have a “force continuum” in place, much as they do with humans, to deal with pets according to how aggressive they are acting toward the officer.

“I fundamentally believe that just about every single one of these shootings was avoidable,” Mulrenin said.

The Metropolitan Police Department is taking steps to train officers and prevent dog shootings, Mulrenin said, but he added that more work needs to be done. Only police academy recruits are currently trained to deal with dogs, he said.  The department could not be reached for comment about its training policies.

Three federal circuit courts have ruled that killing a person's dogs while searching their home violates their Fourth Amendment rights, according to a story in the Washington Post. The story followed an FBI investigation into the killings of a Maryland mayor's dogs during a mistaken drug raid on his house, one of the most widely reported cases of police mistakenly killing dogs during the course of an incident.

On the Web site of the Humane Society of the United States, the organization says a person who believes their pet has been abused or wrongly killed should contact an attorney because civil action may be possible. Additionally, people should complain to police, contact the media or, in the case of the District of Columbia, write the Department of Justice, said Mulrenin.

Despite the potential illegality of police killing dogs, both experts agree that accidents do happen.

“For the most part these things happen accidentally and there's nothing criminally wrong with what happens," Goldfarb said. "People need to contact an attorney and all they can really do is civilly sue and try to get some money, even though it can't replace the pet."

“I believe that the malicious or cowboy killings happen, but they are a minority, at least here" in D.C., Mulrenin said. "Of course, to the dog who is shot and its owner, the end result is still the same, no matter what the cause."