Two more cases of cops killing K-9s after entering the wrong home. First up, Florida:

A Winter Springs police officer shot a Rottweiler on Sunday when he answered a call at the wrong house, authorities said.

Police were called to 147 Hayes Road in Winter Springs when a residential alarm went off. Officers thought, by the location of the house on Hayes and Marlin roads, that they were at the correct home, authorities said. But instead, they were at 601 Marlin Road.

Officers started checking the home’s exterior doors and found a back sliding-glass door unlocked. They entered the home, announced they were police and were met by a large Rottweiler.

As the officers backed out of the home, the dog “approached the officers aggressively, and the officer was compelled to shoot the Rottweiller due to its close proximity to them,” a written statement said.

And in Richmond, California…

The owners of a pit bull that Richmond police officers shot to death have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

The three officers chasing a suspect “acted in reckless and callous disregard for the constitutional rights” of Cynthia Peters and Mark Parr when they shot the couple’s 1½-year-old pit bull Blu on July 27, 2005, according to the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Blu was in the couple’s fenced yard on Sixth Street when the officers opened the gate to pursue a suspect, then shot the dog 11 times with pistols and a shotgun. When Parr ran up and asked the officers, “Why’d you shoot my dog?” police “pointed their guns at him, kicked and punched him and threw him to the ground,” the suit said.

Police arrested Parr on suspicion of obstructing police officers, but no charges were filed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 10:44 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.