Cops shoot dogs in front of Pennsylvania high school

[moonbladem]

A dog fight ended with a hail of bullets in a Philadelphia suburb, leaving residents shocked and looking for answers.

The incident started on Friday at around noon when a stray dog got into a pickup truck at a red light in Chester, Pa., and began fighting with another pooch, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported

Comments

[schexyschteve]

Horrifying, but are people actually expecting a human to get in between two animals fighting?

[squeeful]

Nice idea, but very few people are going to be willing to stick their unprotected hands near two fighting dogs in order to get a rope around their necks. That's a swift way to end up with a mangled hand or worse.

[fenris_lorsrai]

should you ever need to pull apart a dog fight, you need two people. Each grabs the dogs by the back legs like they're a wheelbarrow and you pull them apart that way. Dog now has no leverage, can't turn around on you, and your hands are nowhere near the teeth.

[ebay313]

"Is there no canine division on their force? No local animal control?"

There very well might not be. But if there isn't I would kind of expect the police to have those long handle things with the loop at the end that animal control folks use to loop around an animal's neck from a distance.
And if not- I would think someone could give pepper spray a shot at least.

[poopanna]

I work in Chester. Almost every time I leave work, there's stray dogs running around.
A lot of dog fighting goes on in this shit hole. It's sad.

[jettakd]

As someone who has seen multiple dog fights, I have to say this is overly optimistic. Yes sometimes dogs can be broken up the ways mentioned, but a lot of times these result in injury and sometimes it doesn't even break the dogs up at all. Also in many cases, these dogs will be killed anyway.

I'm very sorry the dogs got shot--I love dogs and have two of my own--, but I don't fault the cops for this. I mostly feel sorry for any kids at the school who saw it and might be traumatized.

[sweetwaterpink]

No, but normally animal control is called in to handle a situation like dog fights or stray animals that are loose in the neighborhood. Only time that I know of a cop shooting a dog is if it is threatening the life of a person. This IMO is extreme.

The article said the animal control officer was unavailable though. I do know that the street should have been cleared. It was in front of a high school and that's dangerous. Bullets can ricochet and hit a bystander.

[omgangiepants]

E: Read further, my bad.

[mastadge]

You know what stops a dog fight every time? A bucket of water. And the dogs don't attack the water slinger, either. It breaks the aggression immediately.

But even in the absence of water, if the dogs were fighting in the back of the truck and not threatening anyone's life or safety, there was no reason to shoot them. Was there no reason the police could not have monitored the situation until animal control arrived rather than simply killing the dogs? Save the shooting in front of a school as a last resort, y'know?

[stainedfeathers]

Bucket of water, I'm going to have to remember that one. I wouldn't have thought of water or rope and I always have a jug of water in my car for emergencies.

I can't quite get as angry or shocked as some of the other commenters because I grew up with Akitas. My dad tried to break up a fight between two of our dogs a long long time ago. These dogs were determined to kill one another and with their size were capable of a lot of damage. It ended with him having his arms lacerated, one dog with an eye torn out and an ear savaged, and the other torn up. I think the one with the eye torn out had to be put down, poor babe... I can understand why the cops may have felt they needed to shoot one or both of the dogs to stop the fight. I don't -agree- with it and think it was a very stupid move (they're cops, they should have better recourse, like say mace, and reasoning ability under pressure like that than some average bystander like me) but I can kinda understand their actions.