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

[chaya]

The video's not working for me - can someone tell me if one or both of the dogs even came near the cops?

[sweetwaterpink]

From the video, the dogs never left the bed of the truck. Five shots were fired at the dogs from close range by one cop. A few seconds later, a second cop fired a shotgun at close range.

[chaya]

...were the dogs practically drowning in their own mouth foam? Is there anything at all to justify...?

[jeweledvixen]

You can't see the dogs at all, just the cops running around and shooting towards the truck, plus a bunch of bystanders watching.

[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.

[lurkerwisp]

Actually, not dogs. Dogs don't react to regular pepper spray like people do and it usually doesn't have a real effect on them.

[oddityangel]

Do you have a source for this? From what I've read dog pepper spray is weaker than human pepper spray (since dogs can't flush their eyes the way humans can), so it's not that human pepper spray doesn't have an effect, but that it's considered inhumane.

[sweetwaterpink]

This was extremely reckless behavior by the cops. They won't have responded this carelessly if it was in an affluent neighborhood.

[hawkward]

There's only ONE animal control officer? never mind, I know animal control officers are a rare breed. Was there not a veterinarian, a vet tech, a K-9 officer, an animal rescuer, or ANYONE else in that whole area just slightly more knowledgeable about dealing with fighting animals? Who was on duty when the one animal control officer was unavailable?

Another question: If the stray got into a pickup truck at a red light and started fighting with the dog in the truck, doesn't it stand to reason that the owner of the dog is in the truck? What's this about "it was unclear who the owners were"? Could the truck have been driven to a safer location?

In my mind, I'm picturing several alternate scenarios for dealing with the dogs. Even a Taser would have been less risky.

[lolahead]

Chester is a very poor area (they make it sound like it was a tree lined, rich suburb of Philly) and they have laid off a lot of public servants such as cops and animal control in recent years. And honestly, people get shot frequently in Chester because cops initiate gunfire in almost every situation. I'm saddened by this but not surprised.

[bestdaywelived]

I'd like to add to this and say that the city has a huge violence problem on its own, it's not just police shooting citizens. There was a state of emergency there two summers ago because they couldn't control the violence; a 2-year-old was gunned down in a drive-by and none of the estimated 45 or so folks who saw it happen would talk.

[bestdaywelived]

I live 3 miles or so from Chester. I can assure you that all of those things you suggest do not exist there. They have such a high crime rate that it was declared a state of emergency two summers ago.