Court Rules Police Officers Can Legally Execute Your Dog if It Does Anything But Sit Silently

by pawbuzz on in Dogs 701

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded Monday that police officers are justified in killing citizens pets; even if those animals are not attacking or attempting to attack them.

Judges MOORE and CLAY (Circuit Judges), and HOOD (District Judge) heard an appeal from the plaintiffs Mark and Cheryl Brown, of Battle Creek, Michigan.

The Browns filed a lawsuit against the BATTLE CREEK Police Department; the City of Battle Creek, and police officers Jeffrey Case, Christof Klein, and Damon Young; for the death of their beloved dogs at the hands of sadistic cops.

The incident occurred on April 17th, 2013, when police were attempting to execute a search warrant on the home where the Browns were living because a police informant reported another man, Vincent Jones was distributing heroin, cocaine, and marijuana from the residence.

Jones was apprehended before police arrived on the scene.

Mark Brown, who was not a suspect in the search; had gone home on his lunch break to let out his two pit bulls. After doing so, he locked the door and headed back to work when police arrived and detained him.

He told them he had a key, and that they didn’t need to destroy the front door to gain entry into the home. But destroy it they did.

The Browns dispute the claims by police that the dogs were barking.

Mark Brown even testified the smaller of the two dogs had “never barked a day in her life.” Officer Klein said the larger dog was barking and “lunged” at him, but later admitted the pet “had only moved a few inches.”

Despite there being no attack, Klein fired a round at the dog. Both dogs ran away from the officers to the basement, obviously fleeing in fear.

There, the two dogs were shot and killed by the officers who felt that they could not properly clear the room and effectively execute the search warrant on the home, explaining they “did not feel [the officers] could safely clear the basement with those dogs down there.”

Going further, the officers stated the “basement was loaded.

You’ve gotta look under beds, you’ve gotta do everything, and [the dogs] basically prevented us from doing that, and they were protecting that basement.” Klein testified the smaller pit bull was “just standing there” when it was shot and killed.

In spite of these sadistic admissions, the appellate court ruled in favor of the officers; the police department, and the other defendants. They agreed with the lower court ruling that the police officers were covered under “doctrine of qualified immunity”; and were therefore not liable for compensating the plaintiffs in the case.

SEE ALSO: A police dog was shot while chasing a suspect — now his partner sees him again

The precedent has now been set. Cops can legally kill your dogs for the sole act of being a dog. If your dog moves, it is dead, if he barks, it is dead. If your dog does anything but sit silently in the other room, it is dead.

However, as the above case illustrates, even if they are silent in the other room, police can still kill them; just to make their search for arbitrary substances deemed illegal by the state — that much easier.



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701 thoughts on “Court Rules Police Officers Can Legally Execute Your Dog if It Does Anything But Sit Silently”

  4. Michelle Thomas

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    Well they will just have to kill me then too. Someone coming in to my home or yard, my timid little Doxie mix is gonna bark, hiding behind something. So, yes if a cop shot him, I’d have a real hard time believing the cop feared for his life from a 10# dog!

  23. Matt Harris

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    ok, I want to clear the air on something. We have all see a video of a cop shooting a dog that is not aggressive and it is devastating to say the lease however 99.9% of the time a cop does NOT want to just shoot a dog.They have to file reports and can get in serious trouble for discharging a weapon around any human or area so once the gun is fired it get very serious for the cop.My point is they do not want to shoot a dog or anything really.Now, if you have a dog coming at a cop at fast pace and the cop does not know the dog then he might shoot to protect himself. I would probably wait until the dog is close enough to see if it’s aggressive before I would discharge the weapon. If you have a dog of any breed you have to be sure that if a cop is around that the dog in contained at all times and not just on a rope but inside a bedroom where the dog cannot get loose and make sure no kids are around to let the dog out of the room. It might be legal to shoot a dog but the cops are not just out there everyday shooting dogs. Everyday in the US the police make about 20,000 calls and out of those 20,000 calls no dogs are killed. In one week that’s 120,000 calls to a house and maybe one dog gets killed. Think of how huge that number is.120,000! I think most people only get one side of the story and notice when a cop shoots a dog there is rarely ever a video of some dog just walking around calmly wagging his tail and then a cop just blows him away.Actaully I have seen one like that but its very uncommon.To worry about cops killing your dog should be the leas thing your worried about today because it’s just not going to happen and if your still worried then you need to get a fake uniform with no tags and have a man wear it and train your dog to be friendly at this time.It could save his life. Cops are not out there to kill your dog.Even if they didn’t like dogs it’s not even worth all the headaches for them not to mention getting into serious trouble

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