laramie

Shocking stories of puppycide by police

Last August, video surfaced

of a case in Oklahoma where an officer pulled into a woman named Tammy Christopher's driveway to ask directions. When Christopher's Wheaton Terrier ran out of the house to great the officer (the dog appears to be bounding in the video)—still on Christopher's property—the officer shoots the dog dead. Christopher released the video to a local news station when the police department wouldn't listen to her complaint.
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Police departments should be training officers how to deal with dogs in ways other than filling them full of bullets. Cops should be taught, for example, how to tell a charging dog from a bounding one; an angry dog from a barking but playful one; and that a curious or territorial bark is much less threatening than a snarl. Mailmen, firemen, paramedics, and the rest of us non-badge-wearing citizens manage to visit private homes and deal with the dogs that may reside in them without resorting gunfire. It's odd that not insignificant number of police officers can't.