Body camera footage from a Texas cop’s perspective shows the officer making kissing noises at two dogs, who wag their tails at the human, before he opens fire and kills one.
The second pit bull, tracked down in Cleburne, Texas, was captured without incident by an animal control officer – but the killing of the dog has the city investigating the incident after an uproar in the city of 30,000 people some 30 miles south of Fort Worth.
The 22-second clip, uploaded Friday onto YouTube, shows a brown pup and another dark colored dog milling about in a grassy ditch near a culvert. The officer can be heard calling to the animals with little kissing noises, causing the pups to perk up and start wagging their tails as the unidentified male officer approaches.
The cop raises his gun, fires once, causing the brown dog to yelp in pain. He fires two more shots, killing the animal and causing its companion to run off and then quickly turn around. The officer continues to approach the second dog with gun raised before stopping and activating his police radio and the clip cuts out.
“As is often the case, the short video does not tell the whole story,” the city wrote in a statement about the shooting. “The officer was responding to a 911 call for assistance. Three dogs had pinned some residents in a vehicle. One dog was secured without incident before the shooting. The officer was attempting to secure the other dogs until animal control arrived when one dog became aggressive.”
A police report, obtained by the Cleburne Times-Review, reveals that officers responded to a call about the aggressive animals around 4 p.m. Monday. The first dog, not shown in the short clip, was not aggressive towards the officer.
“The black and white dog approached me and I made kissing noises to calm it,” the officer wrote in a report. “The dog approached and appeared friendly. The dog jumped on my chest and licked my face.”
The women reporting the dogs told cops the animals were frequently out disturbing neighbors. In this instance, the pups had been aggressive to an elderly woman sitting a car, even attempting to bite one while snapping and growling, the report obtained by the paper indicates.
After putting the friendly dog in its backyard, the officer eventually came upon the other two dogs seen in the video.
“The dogs were a long distance from me and I could not tell they were dogs at the time, due to tall grass and other obstructions,” the officer writes. “I exited my squad to confirm that they were the reported dogs. The dogs came to me with their tails wagging, and did not immediately seem to be aggressive.”
“However, when the dogs came within 20 feet of me, one of them (brown male) crouched low and took an aggressive posture and began growling. The other dog (female) appeared nervous. I made kissing noises in an attempt to calm the dogs. I was standing outside the ditch and [the dog] was in the ditch. I raised my duty weapon to the ready position pointed at the growling dog’s head. As soon as I lifted my pistol, the dog began coming up the hill, continuing to growl and display its teeth. The other dog began backing away. I fired three shots at it. It rolled back into the ditch and died.”
The officer details how the second dog, a female reportedly in heat, stayed a safe distance away and was safely captured by animal control.
It’s unclear from the 22-second video whether the dog killed ever bared its teeth or growled because the vantage point is blocked by the officer’s arm as he raises his gun. The first shot is fired 8 seconds after the video begins, as the officer walks towards the ditch and approaches the dogs.
