By Police1 Staff
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — A court ruled that police use of force against animals is justified if they “pose an imminent threat to the officer’s safety.”
The decision comes from a petition filed by Mark and Cheryl Brown to hold officers responsible for the death of their dogs during a search for drugs in 2013, News10 reported.
The petition stated that officers “unlawfully seized their property in violation of the Fourth Amendment when officers shot and killed two dogs while executing a search warrant.”
One officer testified that he shot and killed the first dog after it “moved a few inches” and lunged at him, according to the news station. The documents said the officer fatally shot the second dog after it retreated to the basement and barked at the officers.
The decision states that “[g]iven that [the dog] bit [Officer] Pezzat hard enough to puncture her leather boots, [Officer] McLeod’s belief—just seconds later— that the dog continued to pose an imminent threat even absent additional aggressive behavior was hardly unreasonable.”
The Browns failed to provide evidence that the first dog did not lunge at police and the second dog did not bark, the decision said.
“Given the totality of the circumstances and viewed from the perspective of an objectively reasonable officer, the dog poses an imminent threat to the officer’s safety,” Judge Eric Clay wrote in the decision. “The standard we set out today is that a police officer’s use of deadly force against a dog while executing a search warrant to search a home for illegal drug activity is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when…the dog poses an imminent threat to the officer’s safety.”