In May the Cabarrus Co sheriff’s office in NC cleared of wrongdoing an ACO who shot a family dog to death. Now we learn a little more about the office’s policies and practices regarding dogs.
On the night of May 31, a Good Samaritan in Cabarrus Co came to the aid of a big dog who had been hit by a car and was unable to get out of the road. The woman did not see a collar on the dog but thought the dog looked well cared for and was probably someone’s pet. She called animal control for help, thinking they would take the dog to the shelter and get him veterinary care. But instead of an ACO responding to the call, a sheriff’s deputy showed up. According to the Good Sam, the deputy held a flashlight on the dog and then shot him to death:
The sheriff’s office declined our request for an on-camera interview, but told us that anytime a call like this comes in, any of the nearby agencies can respond. They say it’s policy to shoot dogs that’ve been hit by cars and are hurt.
The dog was not scanned for a microchip prior to the killing. His body was left at the side of the road overnight.
I have no way of knowing if this dog was someone’s lost pet or was just wandering the neighborhood, looking for a friendly face. I only know that it breaks my heart to think that the last face he saw as he lay injured in the road that rainy night was that of a public servant with a gun.
That’s. Wow. Way to protect and serve.
I once called police to come and shoot an injured deer for me (both hind legs very obviously broken) that I found in the woods. They were quite reluctant to discharge a firearm in a residential area, but the officer upon seeing the deer agreed that it needed to be done. He cleared the area for safety before drawing his weapon. No one was permitted in the woods until he came back out.
I cannot imagine our officers just pulling out a gun on the street and shooting an injured dog – what if the bullet had ricocheted and hit the woman? There was an incident a while back where a cop shot a dog and the bullet went into nearby a teenager’s leg, right?
This woman should sue the city – for emotional distress and placing her in imminent danger of shrapnel/ricochet, etc. It sounds like this is the only way to change policy with people of this kind of mentality – hit them in the wallet, for they surely have no heart.
A so-called officer was branding his shiny new toy weapon in my back yard one day trying to get a shot at a stray dog that was completely harmless and friendly. Until that time I thought that he was one of the decent ones, too, but not anymore after that. Then they put pressure on me and I caught the dog and put it in their pen so they wouldn’t be shooting in a residential area. I don’t know weapons that well except that this one was chrome-colored and one of those short barrels that is about as accurate as throwing rocks. At about the speed of sound.
Some of these people like to kill dogs to frighten and dominate other humans. When you have a police department that is like that people hide petty crime more successfully maybe but my God. When you have a city commission that authorizes animal control to do this to a breed on a wholesale basic, once again, my God. Just down the road from me they did this and they had a Kristallnacht only with pitbulls. They do this to put holes in people’s hearts.
WTF kind of ‘policy’ is it to kill people’s pets if they get injured by a car?!