Cop shoots, kills dog during Adams Morgan festival

UPDATE 7:47 p.m. Sept. 13: The Washington Post has obtained the police report on the incident. It describes the dog as appearing "to be out of control" and says the dog "charged" at the officer before it was fatally shot.

10:16 p.m. Updated with a statement from Third District police that conflicts with the dog handler's spokesman's statement, and an e-mailed statement from the handler himself.

There's never a shortage of police officers at Adams Morgan Day, just in case someone gets out of hand. Today, that someone was a dog.

An officer with the D.C. police department shot and killed a dog — possibly a rottweiler or pit bull — outside The Brass Knob antique store at 2311 18th St. NW. The shooting followed an intense, two-minute scuffle between the dog and what witnesses describe as a "smaller" white dog.

In dispute of the what the dog's handler has said, police tonight released a statement saying the dog was out of control and also bit the handler. Here's the entire e-mail from Third District Capt. Aubrey P. Mongal:

Earlier this afternoon, during the Adams Morgan Day events, an MPD officer encountered a dog in the crowded pedestrian area that got out of the control of it’s handler. The dog attacked another dog and also bit it handler. The officer, after making several attempts to subdue the dog by training tactics, had to finally shoot one time to stop the dog.

On the contrary, says the handler, who only wants to be identified as Aaron. In an e-mail to TBD, Aaron said the apparent foster dog, Parrot, didn't bite anyone.

In my recollection and as the eyewitness accounts will coroborate, the dog was completely under my control when the k9 officer removed me. Parrot bit no human, the only blood he drew was when i thrust my hand into his mouth to get him off the other dog. The k9 officer's injury, which he showed me at the station after, was nothing more than a rope burn from Parrot's leash, suffered when the officer was throwing my dog down a flight of stairs.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, in an earlier response to an e-mail from advisory neighborhood commissioner and candidate for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat Bryan Weaver, said three people, including a K9 officer, were bitten by the dog. Here's an excerpt of the e-mail:

I don't know all of the facts at this point so it is very difficult for me to comment beyond the facts that I have been given. All I know is that there is one dog who was attacked by the pit bull and 3 people, including a K9 officer, that were bitten by the pit bull.

Police sources had earlier told ABC 7 the officer who shot the dog was a canine handler who was experienced with dogs. He was trying to separate the dogs, and attempted to choke hold the larger dog. While he was trying that, the dog attempted to bite him or did bite him, and he threw him down the stairwell in an attempt to injure the dog. The dog charged the officer and the officer opened fire, the sources said.

An unidentified spokesperson for the dog's handler said the cop didn't try hard enough to subdue the dog.

In an e-mail to TBD, Weaver said the dog had seemed friendly at his booth at the festival just 15 minutes before the incident:

"Aaron is a good guy, he said he had the dog under control and the cop grabbed it from him and threw him down the well at [Marie] Reed and shot him. Dog was playing with kids at my booth 15 min earlier. Aaron is really shaken."

One witness, 46-year-old Harriet Winslow, said that at first, she saw the two dogs — the white-sandy pitbull-looking dog and a cute white fluffy lap dog — barking and fighting.

"Everybody glanced over and the owners of these dogs were frantically trying to pull them apart. We're all looking concerned. Suddenly, the owner of the pitbull was down on the ground trying to subdue his dog. He was really trying hard — I have to give him credit. He was on the ground wrapping his arms around the dog. I could see him down on the ground. I mean he was really trying."

After the two dogs were pulled apart, Winslow says she could see that the smaller dog was fine. But the dogs were still barking at each other.

"I glanced over again and I saw a very able bodied police officer fully a stride the dog — the cop straddling dog. The pitbull was still animated, still trying to get up. But this cop — I thought 'Wow this guy is good at this, he subdued a really angry dog.' Then I thought 'Good, this is now over.' Then I walk just five or 10 feet away and I hear a gun shot."

Before she heard the shot, she said she thought "the cop was totally in control. ... It's not something I would want to do. He really was on top of this dog."

Noah Siegel, who works at nearby Spaghetti Garden restaurant, says he saw "two or three cops" surrounding the dog. One of the officers, says Siegel, had the dog on a leash and attempted to drag it away from the commotion.

The dog began "trying to attack the cop," says Siegel. "Next thing I knew, they had it down there in the corner and I heard a shot and that was it," says Siegel, who was interviewed by ABC 7's Brianne Carter.

An onlooker who attempted to intervene in the dogfight sustained a scrape or two. "He's fine," reports ABC 7's Carter.

Clearly you do care, as you are continuing to identify the dog and/or car as a “penis extension”.

If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t bother to continue use of the label.

The dog in the article was leashed and under control—the owner was on top of his own dog (as the police officer would later be) and the dog was leashed and harnessed.

This was not an unleashed dog running amuck. This was a leashed dog that was involved in a brief skirmish with another dog (Perhaps his dog started it, perhaps the poodle started it) and whose owner was sitting on top of him, working to calm him down after the fight.

In any case, your obsession with viewing objects as “penis extensions” says more about you than it does the dog’s owner. Perhaps you bought a car/dog/[insert object or animal] to serve as a penis extension for you and you can’t fathom that other men may not share your reasons for buying one.

I simply can’t fathom why any man, unless he doubted the size of his own “package” in comparison to other men, would concern himself by guessing what he told himself other men used to “compensate” via “penis extenders”, much less make the same argument multiple times in a thread.

http://www.ilovedogs.com/2010/09/rescue-dog-shot-dead-by-cop-at-crowded-street-festival/

Rescue Dog Shot Dead By Cop at Crowded Street Festival

Was last weekend’s shooting death of a dog by a police officer during a crowded street festival in Washington, D.C. justified?

On Sunday, a Poodle mix and a Pit Bull-Shar Pei mix named Parrot got into a scuffle at the Adams Morgan Day festival. Aaron Block, Parrot’s owner, told the Washington Post that he had separated the dogs and was trying to calm Parrot when police officers arrived.

In a statement, Block said Officer Scott Fike knocked him off of Parrot. As a photo taken by witness “Darcycat1” shows, Fike then kneed Parrot in the back and yanked the dog’s front paws underneath him.

Lifting the dog by his neck and back, Fike then threw Parrot over a banister and down a 10-foot concrete stairwell. Block says that when his dog – who “doesn’t handle stairs well” and was 12 to 15 steps away from Fike – staggered to his feet, the officer shot and killed him.

“The officer drew his gun in an unnecessary act of cowboy gunslinging law enforcement and shot my dog amidst a crowd of thousands,” Block said. He had been fostering Parrot through Lucky Dog Animal Rescue.

The police report (PDF) tells an different story, stating that Parrot charged toward Fike in the stairwell. According to the report, Fike, “[f]earing for his safety and the safety of the large crowd that had gathered, discharged one round from his departmental issued 9MM Glock striking the pitbull causing it to fall to the bottom of the stairs. The pitbull later expired.”

Two festival attendees agree with the police report, although neither witnessed the actual shooting. Tony De Pass, a former D.C. police officer, told the Washington Post that Parrot snapped at Fike as the officer held him down, prompting Fike to throw the dog down the stairwell. (The police report says Fike was not bitten, but only scratched on his hand and wrist.) Soleiman Askarinam, the owner of a nearby restaurant, said it took several officers to get Parrot under control, and he felt police “did a good job” in controlling the situation.

Many more witnesses dispute the report. Lucky Dog Animal Rescue reports that one unnamed witness said Parrot appeared to be stunned from the fall and did not charge the officer. The witness said the dog had just gotten to his feet when Fike drew his gun and opened fire without provocation.

“This I saw because I was standing at the doorway of the business where the dog was killed,” the witness said. “As I turned away, in one to three seconds a single shot rang out. I then went out on the platform above the stairwell, and saw the dying dog’s head was nearly on top of the floor drain next to the locked gate at the bottom of the steps, facing away from the steps.”

Other horrified witnesses included 9-year-old Neda Changuit and her parents, who said Parrot appeared to be subdued before Fike threw him over the banister. Changuit’s mother watched “with shock and total disbelief” as Fike calmly fired at the dog. “I thought initially that it couldn’t possibly be a real gun,” she told the Washington Post.

Sushi, the Poodle mix involved in the fight – and who some eyewitnesses say initiated the scuffle — is recovering from two broken bones and a large gash. Her owner, Sheila Martins, told the Washington Post, “the police did the right thing because at that moment, the dog, it wasn’t controllable. I could tell like how aggressive the dog was. If he would start running around, he would attack somebody.” Martins did not witness the shooting.

Parrot is not the only dog to have been questionably shot and killed by a police officer in recent months. As we reported last month, an off-duty officer shot dead Bear-Bear in a Maryland dog park after he got in a scuffle with his dog. The officer, Keith Shepherd, was charged with two misdemeanors: Animal cruelty and discharging a firearm within 100 yards of an occupied home.

In another case this past Sunday in St. Petersburg, Fla., a Chesapeake Bay Retriever and a Rottweiler were both shot to death by what their owner called a “trigger-happy cop” after they scuffled with an unleashed dog that attacked them during a walk. Even after the Chessie was shot and lying on the ground, the officer, Slobodan Juric, shot her two more times. An internal affairs investigation is underway.

Meanwhile, “in memory of a fantastic dog,” Lucky Dog Animal Rescue has created Parrot’s Fund. Donations will be used to rescue bully breeds in high-kill shelters and to educate the community “on the many wonderful attributes of these dogs.”

You can demand that the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department investigates Parrot’s shooting and takes appropriate action against the officer by signing this petition. (Be aware that this links to a petition targeting the Metropolitan Police Department. There is another petition on Facebook that targets the wrong Scott Fike.)

PHOTOS: luckydoganimalrescue.org, voices.washingtonpost.com

The first dog, apparently, was his canine partner, a rottweiler.

Apparently he violated department policy and brought it home. When a fight broke out amongst his partner and his other dogs, he shot the rottweiler.

****

UPDATE: On October 28, the Washington Post reported that Lucky Dog Rescue has filed a complaint with the D.C. Office of Police Complaints about the Parrot shooting incident.

The complaint (http://www.luckydoganimalrescue.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-26-OPC-Complaint-Redacted-FINAL.pdf) includes many additional details about the incident.

It also notes that according to anonymous reports, this isn’t the first time the officer has been involved in a dog shooting: He shot and killed his own Rottweiler with his service weapon when he brought his K9 partner home to play with him and the dogs got in a scuffle.

http://www.ilovedogs.com/2010/09/rescue-dog-shot-dead-by-cop-at-crowded-street-festival/

http://news.change.org/stories/rescue-group-files-official-complaint-for-dog-shot-by-dc-police

“As if that weren’t enough, Lucky Dog Rescue received tips that this wasn’t the first time Officer Fike had shot a dog. The complaint states that Officer Fike brought his K-9 home, a violation of unit rules, to play with his unneutered Rottweiler. When a fight broke out, the service weapon was once again drawn and, this time, used to kill his own dog.

Lucky Dog attempted to obtain records on this incident and were told that, other than confirmation of an animal control incident in the area, there was no paper trail.”

“The stairs down which Fike was tossed is a ‘stairwell’ not a flight of steps. It is probably 4-6 steps, a semi-enclosed area. That, as I understand it, is where the shooting occurred, away from the street where pedestrians would be found. The cop didn’t walk into a crowd and just shoot the dog.”

Fike tossed himself down a stairwell? That *is* impressive. How did he manage to do that?

Some witnesses have stated that the poodle started the fight, if so, it is unsurprising that Parrot was being calmed down from “self-defense mode”. He wasn’t attacking other people or bothering anyone else at the festival when the officer forcibly removed him from his owner’s presence.

Based on the previous incident in which the officer brought his k9 partner home to “play” with his other dogs (against department rules and apparently without proper socialization to ensure that his work dog and pet dogs could be introduced peaceably, this K9 cop needs more training on dealing with dogs. )

If your goal is to increase a dog’s stress and aggression, removing him from his owner is an excellent way to go about it.

If your goal is to violate D.C. law on dealing with these circumstances (see post #84), do exactly what the officer in this case did. The officer, as a canine officer ,should be very familiar with that law and *chose* not to follow it. It’s quite clear that he decided, early on, to put the dog down.

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