PENNSYLVANIA -- A police officer shot and killed a dog in Highspire on Monday after two dogs escaped their owner's back yard earlier in the day.
The officer was responding to several calls about the dogs running loose in the neighborhood near Cherry Avenue and Crescent Street when the shooting occurred.
According to police Chief John McHale, the officer who responded to the calls first approached the home of the dog owner. While talking to a person – not the owner – at the house, he heard the sound of two dogs fighting in a nearby alley.
The officer drove to the alley and, while he was attempting to get out of his car, one of the two dogs approached him in an aggressive posture while growling. McHale said the officer first tasered the dog. However, after the dog stood back up, it continued to aggressively approach the officer.
A second attempted tasering failed, as one of the taser's probes had disconnected from the dog. At that time, the officer drew his service weapon and shot the dog. The officer fired a total of seven shots, McHale said.
McHale said officers are taught to "double tap" when shooting, and the officer thought he only fired twice. It was not until he later checked his pistol that he realized he had fired seven rounds. The second dog fled during the incident and was later reunited with its owner.
McHale said both he and officer involved regretted the incident. McHale said he is the owner of two large dogs, and many of his officers also have dogs as pets. While the borough does not have a large problem with loose dogs, it does occur, he said.
"We go out of our way ... to get them back to their owners," he said, often keeping the dogs at the police station while officers attempt to identify their owners. "I have one officer who still has one at his house, because he couldn't stand to take it to the Humane Society.
"Nobody is happy. The officer is not happy things had to go down this way," McHale said. "It's very regrettable ... everyone feels bad about it."
McHale said the incident remains under investigation.
(Penn Live - Sept 4, 2015)
I hope it's just a public ritual that police officers say they regret shooting pit bull type dogs. Every time they do that, they're saving the life of someone's child or normal pet in future. 98.5% of the public is completely on their side in such shootings.
ReplyDeleteThere can be two reasons this particular officer would know to shoot a pit bull. Either he has large normal dogs and knows what pit bulls do to normal dogs, or else he owns pit bulls and knows what pit bulls do to everything they see breathing.