Claim is a misinterpretation of a US court case dismissed against police who shot two dogs

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 14, 2020 at 15:33
4 min read
By AFP Nigeria, Mayowa TIJANI

An article shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook claims that a US judge has ruled the police can execute dogs if they do “anything but sit silently”. The story surfaced after a US appeals court dismissed a case against officers who shot dead two dogs during a home search. But the claim is misleading; the judge considered the shooting of the dogs justified in this particular case, but did not rule officers could kill the animals for barking or moving.

One of the posts, shared more than 4,300 times and archived here, claims “this is the most horrific court ruling affecting all dogs and their guardians' rights in the United States we've ever seen”. It adds that “your dogs are now fair game for any cop who does not like you, your dog, dogs in general, or who is scared of dogs.”

The article also alleges “cops can legally kill your dogs for the sole act of being a dog. If your dog moves, it is dead. If your dog barks, it is dead. If your dog does anything but sit silently in the other room, it is dead.”

Similar posts have also been shared elsewhere on Facebook by animal rights groups and anti-police pages. We archived some here, here, here and here.

A screenshot taken on February 14, 2020, showing a Facebook post alleging that police can execute dogs if they do “anything but sit silently”

What did the court say?

On April 16, 2013, police shot and killed two pit bulls while searching a home for drugs in the US state of Michigan, as court documents show.

The dogs’ owners, Mark and Cheryl Brown, sued the police over the killings but lost the case. They launched an appeal against the ruling.

AFP reviewed the 25-page final ruling (PDF below) and could find no evidence of the judge giving police officers the right to shoot dogs for not sitting silently.

The Battle Creek Police Department argued its officers had been forced to kill the pit bulls because of their aggressive behaviour.

The force referred to its “Policy on Response to Resistance and Firearms” which defines a vicious dog as “an animal of the canis familaris species which, when either unmuzzled or unleashed, or when not confined to the premises of the owner, menaces a person in a manner which an ordinary and reasonable person would conclude to be an apparent attitude of attack”.

In his ruling (screenshot below), judge Eric Clay concluded that "a police officer’s use of deadly force against a dog while executing a warrant to search a home for illegal drug activity is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when, given the totality of the circumstances and viewed from the perspective of an objectively reasonable officer, the dog poses an imminent threat to the officer’s safety”.

A screenshot taken on February 14, 2020, showing the judge's verdict

The judgment was made “given the totality of the circumstances” involved in this particular case. Therefore, it does not apply to any and every dog as suggested in the viral claims.

The ruling sparked anger on social media and added further fuel to an ongoing debate over US police shootings of dogs.

A year before the shooting, law enforcement trade magazine Police ran a story asking “Can police stop killing dogs?”, citing cases of canine shootings by officers.

Following the Brown verdict, Quartz published an article with the headline “US police shoot dogs so often that a Justice Department expert calls it an ‘epidemic’”. And in 2017, The Atlantic wrote that “dog shootings warrant national attention” and indicated a “persistent problem in law enforcement”.

Complex legal issue

Rebecca Wisch, associate editor at the Michigan State University Animal Legal & Historical Center, told AFP that US police shooting dogs remained an issue in 2020.

Wisch said there was “not necessarily one specific law that protects police officers who shoot dogs while discharging their duties.”

Instead, each state has a legal test whether the circumstances of a particular situation give an officer qualified immunity for shooting a dog.

“It is a relatively complicated concept that hinges on whether the actions are of a discretionary function or whether they are part of an official policy of the policy agency. The analysis is also based on whether the officer acted reasonably at the time of the incident,” Wisch said.

She explained it was difficult for dog owners to prove that a police officer acted improperly by shooting their dog, adding that “very few cases are found in favour of the plaintiff-owners”.

However, one such case led to a $250,000 settlement from the city of Detroit, after its police officers shot three dogs in a marijuana raid in 2016.

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