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Posted on 08/23/2014 1:11:17 PM PDT by moonshinner_09
MILLS, Wyo. A Wyoming police officer has pleaded not guilty to an animal-cruelty charge that alleges a police dog died after he left it in a hot patrol car for several hours.
According to an investigator's statement filed in Natrona County Circuit Court, Mills police officer Zachary Miller left the dog, a 10-year-old female black lab named Nyx, in his patrol car for over six hours July 9.
"It's a tragedy," Mills Mayor Marrolyce Wilson said.
The car was running, but the air conditioning was off and outside temperatures reached 86 degrees, KCWY News 13 reported (http://bit.ly/1tAzzhs).
Miller, a four-year veteran of the Mills Police Department, has pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charge, the Casper Star-Tribune reported Friday (http://bit.ly/1vsZr03 ).
KCWY reported that he appeared for a preliminary hearing Friday.
Nyx was trained to detect drugs and had been with the department since 2006. Miller had been her handler for the past two years, and the dog lived with his family and went on family vacations.
Mills police Chief Bryon Preciado said it's not normal to leave a car running that long. "I'm not justifying it," Preciado said.
The affidavit states that Miller left the dog inside his car, went into the police department about 6 a.m. and did not return to the car until about 12:20 p.m. Police dogs are allowed inside the station, Preciado said.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotteobserver.com ...
Enforce the law.
These Wyoming statutes comprise the state’s dog laws.
§ 6-5-211 Injuring or killing a police dog, fire dog, search and rescue dog or police horse prohibited; penalties.
(a) Any person who knowingly, willfully and without lawful cause or justification permanently disables or inflicts death upon any animal defined in subsection (b) of this section shall be liable for restitution by order of a court and shall be guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten (10) years, a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00), or both.
(b) As used in this section:
(i) “Police dog” means any dog that is owned, or the service of which is employed, by a law enforcement or corrections agency for the principal purpose of aiding in the detection of criminal activity, enforcement of laws or apprehension of offenders;
If this article is to be believed, he left his car running at idle speed for SIX HOURS while he was in the police station. But he did not turn on the air conditioner.
Hard to find any explanation but sheer idiocy.
/johnny
So, not even police dogs are safe from the po-po.
He should at least be charged with felony criminal negligence.
This is the hottest weekend we have had in Houston this summer and yesterday a woman left her baby in the car and went to the mall. The child didn’t die, someone heard the child crying and got him out and to the hospital, the mother went to jail!
How this can happen again and again with children and dogs, show up on the news and the morons among us keep on doing it. What kind of a world do these people live in?
a follow-on article at the same Channel 13 source ‘cost to taxpayers,’ reads it will cost the city $40K to replace the officerdog. I don’t know if “not providing a dog with adequate water, food, or protection from the weather” really describes what happened, unless protection from weather includes man-made sealed up car and leaking carbon monoxide fumes kind of weather as ‘weather’.
Something in there about a trainee ridealong muddles the picture. But I’m left asking, does the PD have a safe kennel area for their officerdogs and, if not, why not?
It also has to be believed that no police officer or an employee or a visitor coming in or out paid any attention to the running car, and to the dog locked inside. In other words, nobody cares what's happening around the police station - there are no cameras and nobody is looking. We should only hope that those ISIL fellows that cross the border from Mexico don't know how to rent a Ryder truck.
I can see firing the guy, but sending someone to prison over a dog is evil. It’s a dog. Get another one.
The police budget is too big if they can afford to leave the engine running that long.
Dick...
Same thing happened in Jackson County, Ms. last year.
Guess what he was charged with?
NOTHING
The car was running for six plus hours? What. He doesn’t pay for the fuel I guess. Then no ac on. Makes you wonder what he did all night before his shift. Too bad he didn’t forget to leave the poor dog home. Did he get a nap at his desk too? Darwin Award...
Police Dog, huh.
Well, as done to others — put death on the table.
you forgot the sarc tag.
Too stupid to be a policeman.
I wondered about that — why is it a misdemeanor, when if a citizen killed the dog it would be a felony?
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