Posted on 07/07/2011 11:28:16 AM PDT by Immerito
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.
Then a cop appeared.
"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.
Do you believe that it is acceptable for an officer to destroy your private property when it is under your control?
Yep, and apparently, this cop believed he had license to take private property from its owner without cause.
Which dog had a kid locked in its jaws? I don’t see that in any of the articles.
By the way, what biological evidence do you have that any dog is capable of “locking” anything in its jaws?
I’ve heard that as well. Thanks for posting that. :-)
Why should the cop’s statements, given that he is a government agent, be given more weight than the statements of other witnesses at the scene?
I take the same precautions with my female bullmastiff. She does not have an aggressive bone in her body, gets along famously with our cat, allows my children to hug her, poke her, and prod her with endless patience. She has been to obedience classes and mutiple to vet’s offices for an allergy problem, and she is beloved by all for her sweet temperament.
However, when she is around other dogs, particularly the typical out-of-control, yapping toy dog with a Napoleon complex, I keep Maggie on leash and as distant as possible. I was asked by one of these numbskull owners one time why I wouldn’t let Maggie play, and my response was “If something goes wrong, the big dog always gets blamed.”
““If something goes wrong, the big dog always gets blamed.””
Sadly, that is often the case. The larger breeds, even the gentle giants, get a bad rap, and the smaller breeds are often cast as the helpless victim of the “big bad dog”.
The dog was not under control by its ‘handler.’ If you read the one eyewitness’s report, the cop as ‘astride’ the dog that was still fighting to get up and likely back in the fight. The ‘handler’ who’s given kudo’s for ‘really trying,’ did NOT have the dog under control and should never have brought him to the event to begin with.
You may never have attended this event, but I have. It is very crowded in an urban neighborhood; families come with their small children. It is not an environment for pittbulls and/or rottweilers.
“And you, being cop-hater #1 around here, should obviously disregard the cop’s statements.”
so much for being rational eh.
I only hate corrupt cops. I strongly dislike cops who blindly support other cops regardless of how bad their actions.
It’s clear that the writer of the article has no clue what breed the other dog was. A rottweiler does not resemble an American Staffordshire terrier.
The other dog has been identified as a poodle, and it may (or may not) have instigated the fight).
The dog struggling does not defacto indicate that it desired to re-engage in the fight, but that it wanted to be *up*.
Furthermore, the witness who described him as “trying” also indicated that she turned away from the scene. People who have reason to believe that someone can barely control what they deem an apparently aggressive dog do not typically take their eyes off the dog, as that witness did. It is clear that she thought shooting the dog was an overreaction, and inappropriate, regardless.
Since the poodle may have instigated the fight, why are you laying the blame on the owner of the other dog, whose dog is just as conceivably the victim of an attacking dog?
“I only hate corrupt cops. I strongly dislike cops who blindly support other cops regardless of how bad their actions.”
The corrupt cops give their honest, honorable brothers in blue a bad name. There is no reason that an honest, honorable cop should object to having the actions of a dishonest, dishonorable cop exposed.
Definitely not a Rottweiler.
As for what I said to the other poster. he said ANYONE who shoots a dog isn't a man or something of that nature. It was only my intention to point out that there are many justified reasons to shoot a dog. This scenario may or may not have been one of them.
The other poster stated:
“yeah never mind the witness statements and the picture which is posted above. please disregard those”
In picture 12, the cop has the dog clearly on the ground. I have yet to know a dog, who when pinned by a dog or human larger than itself, will not submit.
Tossing the dog down a stairwell and shooting it, just because the cop could, were uncalled for.
If the cop was physically incapable of restraining the animal, as the owner was doing, he should have left it to the owner to control his own dog.
How many of the witnesses walked away thinking highly of the cop in question, or the D.C. police department?
“A canine killing machine [breaking] tether of its spaghetti limbed, hipster handler” is not what occurred in this case.
What happened was a common dogfight. Perhaps started by the poodle, perhaps started by the other dog, but the incident had been taken care of by both dogowners.
I wonder how many human on human crimes occurred, because two or three cops decided to intervene with one man’s dog? Crime must have been slow at the festival that day.
Dogs are legitimate tools for the release of day to day tensions of our heroes in blue. No officer will ever suffer so much as a tsk-tsk for shooting a dog. I think they are allowed to shoot something or someone when the tension builds up to what an officer feels is an intolerable level. Then he can shoot someone to relieve it. It is good, in such circumstances that there is a dog in the vicinity for him to shoot. He would suffer a pang of regret if he had to shoot a person. If he shot a person when there was a dog present his chief would frown and that would increase the officer’s level of felt tension...
My American Mastiff is very gentle, and my husband trained him from 7 weeks old to never ever put his teeth on a person anywhere. He can actually close his flews over his teeth when taking a treat from fingers.
On the other hand, I have to say that I saw him get protective, moving to between me and a man, for no reason I could determine. I have to believe my dog knew better than I. In any case, he didn’t even growl but the man got the message somehow. Must be a guy thing.
On the other hand, I had a minpin for 15 years, she just passed away last December. She was 7 or 8 when we got the mastiff as a 7 wks puppy from the breeder, and she mothered him, and actually housebroke him for us. It all depends on the small dog, too. My daughter’s little bichon was very playful, and he and the mastiff got along. Nobody was aggressive, in these instances, and all of them had learned how to play with another animal.
This thread is not about the doggy.
Judging by the constant reports of cops shooting unarmed citizens and raiding wrong houses then being smug about shooting residents therein etc etc I have to say that honest neighborhood cops seem to be an endangered species and that a citizen should never assume that the cop in front of him is such a rational protector of the community. Down here we have incidents of motorists being shot reaching for their driver’s licenses that the cop ordered them to produce. It is much more rational to regard the boys in blue as your potential executioners. I stopped calling police for anything at all a couple of years ago.
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