Cop Shoots Service Dog During Kid’s Birthday Party

On Saturday, a police officer
in Filer, Idaho responded to a call about two dogs running around
without leashes on a suburban street. Thirty-eight seconds after
exiting his patrol car, Officer Tarek Hassani determined that one
of the animals was too aggressive and fatally shot it in the front
yard of its owner’s house. A
video (NSFW) shows the 7-year-old black labrador
convulsing and whimpering before moving out of the dash cam’s line
of sight.

The dog, named “Hooch,” belonged to Rick Clubb, who says he
suffers from Parkinson’s disease and that Hooch was his trained
service animal. At the time of the shooting, Clubb was apparently
inside, hosting his 9-year-old son’s birthday party.

Hassani
explained to another officer after the altercation ended, “I
get out to talk to the people, two dogs come around me, one of
them’s growling and snarling. I kick it. It comes back around, now
it’s growling and snarling. I kick it again. Then it lunges at me,
I’m like, fuck you. So, I just shot it.”

Although it is not visible on the video, the audio picks up the
sound of the officer’s car door opening and within two seconds, the
pet begins yelping, presumably, as Hassani acknowledges, because he
kicked it. 

Hassani gave Clubb a $100 citation for letting the dog run
at-large.

Clubb
told KTVB, “My dogs, they’d get out, yes, but you don’t have to
shoot them. There’s other ways around it besides shooting them.” He
speculated about the officer’s action,
asking the Times–News, “What if [a bullet]
had ricocheted through the window?” Clubb acknowledged, “Maybe I
deserve a ticket, but I don’t deserve a dead dog.”

Police Chief Tim Reeves
explained to a local Fox affiliate, “My decision was that
[Hassani] did a good job and he was totally justified in putting
the dog down.”