Title: Video shows Minneapolis police officer shooting two dogs in north Minneapolis yard Source:
Star Tribune URL Source:http://www.startribune.com/video-sh ... th-minneapolis-yard/433481333/ Published:Jul 9, 2017 Author:Pat Pheifer Post Date:2017-07-11 07:25:35 by Deckard Keywords:None Views:5288 Comments:34
Neither dog appears to have been charging at the officer.
The Facebook video is disturbing. A uniformed Minneapolis police officer is seen in the fenced backyard of a home in north Minneapolis.
As of Sunday afternoon, both dogs were alive but their owner, Jennifer LeMay, was facing thousands of dollars in bills for vet care and surgery.
Minneapolis police released a statement Sunday saying an investigation is underway and “at this time, there is no further information we can release.”
The incident happened about 9:15 p.m. Saturday in the 3800 block of Queen Avenue N. The episode was recorded on security video cameras in LeMay’s backyard.
On Sunday evening, a Minneapolis police officer visited LeMay’s home to extend condolences and discuss what happened.
LeMay and her four children own the dogs, Ciroc and Rocko. Both are Staffordshire terriers that the family has had since they were puppies. The dogs are physician-prescribed emotional support animals for LeMay’s two sons, who suffer from severe anxiety.
Police spokesman Corey Schmidt sent a one paragraph statement:
“We are aware of the recent incident involving MPD officers responding to an audible residential burglary alarm and while at this call an MPD officer discharged their firearm, striking two dogs belonging to the homeowner. Anytime an officer discharges their firearm in the line of duty there is an investigation. We are in the process of reviewing the video posted online, as well as the officer’s body camera video.”
LeMay told what she knows of the incident from her daughters and from her security camera video:
She and her family were camping in Wisconsin while a friend watched the dogs at LeMay’s home. LeMay’s daughters, ages 18 and 13, decided to come home early because the 18-year-old was supposed to work an early shift at a fast-food restaurant on Sunday morning.
The daughters arrived at the house at 8:50 p.m. Saturday. One of them accidentally triggered the alarm. LeMay said she phoned the security company and the alarm was deactivated at 8:54 p.m.
At 9:15 p.m., two officers arrived at the home. Neither knocked on the front door, Le May said, but one stayed in front while the other apparently scaled a 7-foot privacy fence to get into the backyard.
The video, with no audio, shows an officer standing in the yard. He approaches the house and goes out of camera range. A moment later, he steps back rapidly, his gun drawn.
Ciroc, a white and brown dog, trots toward the officer and stops about 10 feet away. The dog looks distracted but does not appear to be charging the officer. The officer fires, the dog falls and then scrambles to his feet and runs away. At the same time, a black dog runs into camera range. The officer shoots several times and the dog flees.
The officer appears to assess the scene briefly before he leaves the yard by climbing over the fence.
LeMay said her 13-year-old daughter saw the entire incident from her upstairs bedroom.
“He was wagging his tail,” LeMay said of Ciroc. “My dog wasn’t even moving, lunging toward him or anything.
“My dogs were doing their job on my property,” she said. “We have a right to be safe in our yard.”
After the dogs’ shooting, another officer knocked on the front door. The 18-year-old explained that she’d triggered the alarm and that it had been deactivated.
The family didn’t instantly take the dogs to the emergency vet because police told the family that “animal control” would be there in minutes to access the dogs’ medical needs. No one showed up, LeMay said.
When Lt. Derrick Barnes came to the house Sunday evening, he was “as genuine and compassionate as he could be, without overstepping his boundaries,” LeMay said.
Both dogs went to the emergency vet Saturday night. Ciroc was shot in the jaw, Rocko in the side, face and shoulder. So far, LeMay has paid $900 for Ciroc and brought him home; he still needs $5,000 to $7,000 worth of surgery at the University of Minnesota, she said. Rocko came home Sunday night. A GoFundMe page was established to help LeMay pay her vet bills.
A police report filed in the shooting of two dogs inside their north Minneapolis yard by an officer over the weekend says the animals "charged at [the] officer," an account that appears to differ from the resident's security video of the encounter.
You get your children support dogs in the form of pits? Are you just stupid?
Pits will attack even with tails a wagging. They batshit crazy breed evil dogs.
BTW the dogs hair was standing up and the other dog charged which probably cause the officer to shot the dogs. Was it necessary for the officer to climb the fence who knows im not an officer.
Yes the dog did what a dog does. But once the officer entered the yard he wasn't going do nothing and get bit. It all comes down to should have the officer entered the backyard or not. Once the second dog charged the officer could have ran(got attacked by 2 dogs from the back side) or protect himself. I take people over dogs every time. Well unless the people are criminals then dog over criminals.
The problem with endless gymnastics to defend the police when they act indefensibly is that one ends up sounding like Baghdad Bob or the North Korean news agency.
Violent crime in America has been going down since the 1990s, but police violence against civilians, and outrages against civilian property, have been going up and up and up since we hired a boatload of Iraq and Afghanstan War veterans twitching with PTSD to be cops.
When the cops kill people and pets and take money, and are defended in the Baghdad Bob style, they are losing the support of the American people. People no longer give police the benefit of the doubt. The legal system still does, for the moment, but that moment will pass as politicians tap into the rising disgust and rage at our out-of-control police. Legalize pot, and the police STILL don't back down - they act like a law unto themselves.
The net result of this will be a turning of the wheel, in which officers start being made examples of by the political system and juries.
Police commanders need to reign it in.
In my nice little town, where the last cop killed was in a car accident in the 1940s, I had a private conversation with the then-police chief over breakfast once in which he discussed his view of his job as being - "Number 1, to protect his officers."
Um, NO, guy - you are hired to protect US. Your Number 1 job is to protect US. If your focus, first and foremost, is on protecting and advancing your fellow officers in blue, then you don't have the right mindset. You can pretend that you're doing a dangerous job all you like, but it is objectively not true. Towns on the Connecticut Gold Coast are not dangerous, the only violent crime is between drunken spouses, the primary form of outside-of-the-home crime is drunk folks driving home from dinner parties, and nobody has assaulted a police officer since the 1800s.
It was actually highly offensive to hear this well-paid and safe civil servant speaking of his police force as though it were a beseiged army of occupation, with dangers lurking at every turn. The complete lack of objectivity or reality in it was laughable, but the implications of it - that these guys are driving around our little town like scared humorless robocops (and they DO seem humorless) - are not.
The police in America are heading for a fall, and so are their Baghdad Bob defenders.
