The Detroit Free Press
DETROIT (AP) -- Several families have filed complaints against police officers for firing as many as 20 shots in residential neighborhood while killing a dog -- sending bullets into occupied houses.
Police say the dog attacked them, so they had to shoot it. But their bullets also hit two houses and a plastic tank filled with gas.
The Detroit Police Department’s internal affairs unit and the Office of the Chief Investigator, which handles citizen complaints, are investigating the shooting, which involved three officers.
Kevin Claiborne, who is a city firefighter, still is angry about the Jan. 13 shooting. One of the shots went through his front window as he was holding his daughter in the kitchen, slamming into a wall several feet from them.
“I still don’t really know how the bullet missed us,” Claiborne told the Detroit Free Press for a Monday story. “There must have been an angel in the room.”
Claiborne and another resident attended the Feb. 26 Board of Police Commissioners meeting to complain.
Cmdr. Charles Barbieri of the 5th Precinct said the three officers were sent to a remedial firearms course after the incident, which he called standard procedure.
“I don’t think it was a questionable shooting,” Barbieri said. “They had a vicious dog and they had to shoot it. It’s fairly common. I know it did take a few shots to put the dog down.”