Chicago Cops Chasing a Robber Shoot a Dog in a Backyard the Suspect Never Entered

As J.D. Tuccille
noted last week, the Justice Department’s Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) recently produced a set
of five 10-minute videos aimed at police officers who are
curious about how to encounter dogs without killing them.
Unfortunately, none of the videos addresses a scenario quite like

this one: Police chasing an armed robber run into a fenced
backyard, where they come across a Italian Mastiff named Castro and
shoot it. “It’s like I lost a family member,” Castro’s owner, Terry
Taylor, told WBBM, the CBS affiliate in Chicago. “Very
difficult.” 

The cops were in a hurry, so maybe they didn’t have time to
notice the “Beware of Dog” sign or to grab something they could
have used as a barrier or distraction. We have to assume (don’t
we?) that they had no pepper spray or Tasers they could have used
to ward off Castro without firing bullets into him and that there
was no opportunity simply to leave the yard and close the gate. And
I’m guessing the cops were not carrying dog treats they could have
used to mollify Castro. But here is one measure they could have
taken that would have saved the dog’s life: Before you go charging
into someone’s backyard, make sure that’s where your suspect
is.

It turns
out that the robber was actually hiding under the front porch, just
a few feet from where the police were standing when they killed
Castro. He emerged from his hiding spot a few hours later,
startling Taylor’s son not only with his sudden appearance but with
an unexpected apology. “He came from under the porch,” DeMarkus
Southern told WBBM. “He had the gun in his hand, he was backing up,
talking to me like this, and he is telling me, ‘I apologize for the
police killing your dog. I seen the whole thing.’ He put the gun
back on his hip [and] proceeded down the street.”

An apology is probably more than Taylor will get from the
Chicago Police Department. “I said, ‘Why’d you shoot the dog?” said
a neighbor, Aaron Thompson, recounting his conversation with one of
the officers. “He said, ‘I didn’t shoot the dog. The assailant shot
the dog.”

[Thanks to Slammer for the tip.]