It's the sort of confrontation that invariably draws controversy -- a dog rushes toward a police officer, and the officer, often fearing for his or her safety, opens fire.
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| Pit bull was shot with tranquilizer and subsequently euthanized after it bit child in Stapleton. |
Those incidents are relatively infrequent -- just four on Staten Island last year, and three so far this year -- but when they happen, anger and outrage often follow.
Two weeks ago, on Nov. 20, Joseph Brenneck, an off-duty Port Authority officer, shot and killed a Westerleigh family's Doberman, named Boo Boo, as he was walking his own pug in the neighborhood.
The incident has sparked an investigation by the Port Authority, and Brenneck has been on sick leave since, according to a P.A. police spokesman.
The Doberman's owners have hired a lawyer, and the shooting has spurred heated debate, both online and off, as to whether the officer was in the right.
In a lower-profile case just four days later, on Thanksgiving, an NYPD officer shot and wounded a pit bull in Stapleton in the line of duty.
Police were responding to a 911 call about a 16-year-old bitten by a dog, and when they got to the scene, the pit bull rushed the responding officers, according to police. The dog has since been "humanely euthanized," said a spokesman for New York City Animal Care and Control.
Last year, members of the NYPD fired their guns in 30 incidents involving animals -- four of them on Staten Island -- compared to 33 incidents involving an "adversarial conflict" with a human being, states the department's firearm discharge report.
In all but one of those cases -- which involved an off-duty NYPD officer in Westchester County and a raccoon -- the animal in question was a dog.
Police also registered 29 other shooting incidents in 2010 -- 21 unintentional discharge incidents, six unauthorized uses of a firearm and two suicides.
The number of officer-vs.-human shootings has been nearly cut in half over the last 10 years, and Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, says he wouldn't be surprised if the officer-vs.-animal number drops next.
"I think that's the next piece of that puzzle, to get that number as close to zero as possible," O'Donnell says.
The NYPD report goes into further detail about 2010's animal incidents. Of the 32 dogs involved, 19 were killed and seven were injured. The raccoon was not hurt.
So far, police have completed internal investigations into 22 of the 30 shooting incidents, and in all 22, the officer was not found to have violated police procedure or the law.
Twelve officers suffered injuries -- nine from dog bites, another three from ballistic fragment ricochet -- while six civilians suffered dog bites.
In all, those 30 incidents amount to a fraction of the 28,000 calls for service involving dogs and other animals.
According to the NYPD's patrol guide, "Police officers shall not discharge their firearms at a dog or other animal except to protect themselves or another person from physical injury and there is no other reasonable means to eliminate the threat."
That's a slightly lower threshold compared to the "imminent death or serious physical injury" required for an officer to fire at a person, but O'Donnell says the intent is clear:
"The way the NYPD phrases it, they don't quite forbid it, but it's pretty explicit in its discouraging the use of deadly force."
Port Authority police officers are required to follow "extremely strict guidelines for use of force" established by both New York and New Jersey's attorneys general, says P.A. police spokesman Al Della Fave.
The investigation as regards Brenneck will be to determine whether he met those guidelines, Della Fave says.
"All Port Authority officers receive extensive training in those guidelines during their pre-service training period," says Della Fave. "They must demonstrate a clear understanding of those guidelines or suffer dismissal from the academy. That training continues throughout their career in regular in-services and during pistol requalification sessions."
Still, the response to a charging dog will vary by officer, says a veteran NYPD source.
"Those are situations that are just completely unpredictable. The officer doesn't have any time to assess it," the source said. "When one officer might be fearful of a dog, another officer may not be."
And often, the breed of the dog matters. In the three cases on the Island so far this year, two involved pit bulls that had already attacked someone, according to police.
"The majority of the dogs that are being shot are pit bulls," says Dr. Randall Lockwood, the senior vice president for forensic sciences and anti-cruelty projects for the ASPCA. "Pit bulls are more of a problem, or police are more inclined to shoot pit bulls first and ask questions later."
The ASPCA runs training classes for several police agencies, including the NYPD's Police Academy, and those classes teach officers to go for their guns only as a last resort.
"We actually do recommend a use-of-force continuum," Lockwood said.
An officer should first read the dog's body language -- they can be trained to do so -- to determine whether the animal is attacking, posturing or simply playing.
"The first step is to more accurately assess the dog's actions," Lockwood says.
That, even though officers regularly say that dog encounters happen too fast to react with anything other than deadly force, Lockwood says
If the dog is a threat, sometimes the officer can defuse the situation by making himself or herself appear larger, he says, or by giving a basic command like "sit."
"It's like telling a suspect to stop," Lockwood says.
If that doesn't work, the next stop on the continuum is to use a collapsible baton, or a flashlight -- it gives the dog something else to focus on. In some cases, Lockwood says, "the simple act of snapping open a baton and extending a baton makes the dog back off." It makes the officer look bigger and more intimidating, he says.
The next step is using a chemical deterrent -- although tear gas doesn't work on dogs, pepper spray can get the job done, Lockwood says. "Pepper spray does work on dogs, although some officers are taught that it doesn't," he says.
Still, Lockwood says, "We do recognize there are situations where dogs are being used as offensive weapons."
Firing a gun should be the last option that a police officer employs against an animal, says one source, a former NYPD officer who now trains police on handling dogs.
"In an urban environment, discharging a firearm can have severe consequences," the retired officer says. "A dog is not a big target. ... In a confined space, a dog, even a big dog, is a small target."
Last January, in a Bronx alley, two narcotics detectives were injured by a ricochet after a third detective shot a charging pit bull -- the bullet passed through the dog's paw and bounced off a wall.
A similar incident happened in July 2009, when three officers opened fire on a pit bull that charged them inside an Upper East Side housing project. All three ended up wounded by ricocheting bullet fragments and flying pieces of the walls and floor.
And in 2007, a police officer in Oklahoma opened fire on a snake in a tree, only to hit and kill a 5-year-old boy at a pond nearby.
Sometimes, the retired officer says, an item like a handy garbage can serve as a quick-and-easy barrier between an officer and a dog, adding: "Firearms should be the last resort."
(Staten Island Live - Dec 8, 2011)
