Court Strips Immunity From Cop Who Shot A Dog Within Seconds Of Arriving On The Scene Of A Non-Crime
from the killing-dogs-is-still-regular-police-business dept
Cops kill dogs literally all the time. It happens so often even the DOJ has taken notice.
Laurel Matthews, a supervisory program specialist with the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (DOJ COPS) office, says it’s an awful lot. She calls fatal police vs. dogs encounters an “epidemic” and estimates that 25 to 30 pet dogs are killed each day by law enforcement officers.
So, when Loveland (CO) police officer Matthew Grashorn arrived on the scene of a non-crime, he did what cops do: he killed someone’s dog. This killing happened only 13 seconds after Officer Grashorn arrived, something confirmed by his own body camera recording.
Colorado residents Wendy Love and Jay Hamm had done nothing more than stop in the vacant parking lot of a local business to give their dogs a chance to stretch their legs while the couple took a look at the second-hand ice machine they had acquired. The business owner called the police after noticing this on his security cameras, claiming he felt the couple was perhaps attempting to tamper with his locked dumpster.
Officer Grashorn arrived, exited his vehicle, and was greeted by one of the couple’s dogs running toward him. He yelled at the couple to get their dog, which the couple did, calling back their 16-year-old dog, Bubba, who was first to greet the officer. However, another of their dogs, a terrier/boxer mix named Herkimer trotted towards the officer. Grashorn shot the second dog. Then he prevented the couple from comforting the wounded animal or seeking help for its wounds, delaying any medical care until after a supervisor had arrived. By that time it was too late for Herkimer. He was euthanized after spending four days in intensive care.
Adding insult to injuries resulting in death, Grashorn issued a summons for unlawful ownership of a dangerous dog to the grieving couple, a charge that was ultimately dismissed.
The couple sued the city of Loveland, along with Officer Grashorn. Grashorn claimed the dog “aggressively” approached him, justifying his ultimately deadly force. The couple claimed the dog merely approached the officer with normal curiosity and never posed a threat.
A year after the filing of the lawsuit, the couple has finally secured a bit of justice. As Colorado Politics reports (and, even better, provides a copy of the ruling), Officer Grashorn has been denied qualified immunity by the federal court.
The court comes to this conclusion despite never having viewed the body cam video, which the couple inexplicably failed to enter into evidence. No doubt this will be corrected as the case moves forward to trial, but it’s still an unforced error.
Despite this lack of evidence that would likely resolve a bunch of disputed facts, the court agrees that the killing of the couple’s dog was not only a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, but an unreasonable one at that. From the decision [PDF]:
[T]he Court finds it would be clear to a reasonable officer that “killing a pet dog is a Fourth Amendment seizure” and would violate the Fourth Amendment, “absent a warrant particularly describing the things to be seized or circumstances justifying an exception to the warrant requirement.” Whatever lawful justifications may exist for the seizure in this case, the Court finds the circumstances alleged in the Complaint do not establish an exception to the warrant requirement as a matter of law. And regardless of whether Defendant Grashorn believed Herkimer posed an imminent threat justifying the use of deadly force, the allegations do not establish that the shooting the dog was reasonable.
The court doesn’t bother to discuss whether or not this violation of rights is clearly established. That will likely come into play during the inevitable appeal of the decision. It merely states flatly that a reasonable officer would not believe deadly force was justified in this situation. If that ruling withstands an appeal, cops who kill dogs in this jurisdiction will be on notice they’ll need to provide more than subjective statements about feeling “threatened” by the mere approach of man’s best friend.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, colorado, dogs, jay hamm, loveland, matthew grashorn, police, qualified immunity, wendy love
Comments on “Court Strips Immunity From Cop Who Shot A Dog Within Seconds Of Arriving On The Scene Of A Non-Crime”
“Ignorance is just another great excuse to shoot something or someone.”
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Yet ignorance is no excuse, cops will tell you! I suppose it being a raison d’etre for constant violence is a privilege that comes with a badge, similar to how many men who join the military seem to feel.
It’s hard not to feel angry about it, especially when one gets the chilling reminder police violence is one phone call away. After all, that’s why things like swatting exist.
And the recourse of the court system is simply some sociopathic satire of justice, so… Whether it’s a beloved pet, a friendly acquaintance, or human family – cops can be counted to shoot and kill an animal or human we can all picture losing in our lives.
And yet there’s countries filled with citizens even more filled with rationalizations for the existence of such institutions, thinking this somehow represents justice. Oh well.
Loveland dirty cops
I was hit on my harley by an loveland city official in a Halloween costume and nearly killed. 105 days after an the accident and a corrupt investigation and I was released from the hospital after nearly 2 months. I tried pursuing these cops civilly and was thrown in prison for 30 months. These cops are corrupt and must be stopped.
Re: their names
give me their names and I will kill them for free
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That will surely make the situation better… /s
How about you fuck off and take your murderous intent with you.
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We can agree that going after Mr. Grashorn after the fact to exact revenge might be beyond the pale. But if the dog’s owners had managed to do something on scene, or had somehow been able to, say, forcibly prevent him from killing their dog in the first place, I’d be okay with that.
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Sir, that’s gonna warrant a visit from the FBI.
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Unless it’s the FBI touting for someone to entrap.
Wait this is a thing? Could people go after the city (for it’s ‘ownership’ of the PD)? Or maybe the city would be granted QI despite “unlawful ownership of dangerous dog(s)”.
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Reminds me of the time when the RIAA issued a summons to a grieving family, claiming a deceased grandfather had been pirating music and promising not to bring charges until after the family had finished mourning.
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You seem to forget the legal principle of “I’m rubber, you’re glue” when it comes to police; charges/suits/etc that stick to citizens bounce right off them. That’s not just qualified immunity, but a culture of shielding cops from accountability. Sometimes it shakes out that the worst cases become a sacrifice for the entire culture of white supremacist violence behind a badge, so that the latter can continue on.
The system works, right?
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Police can afford to have lawyers, they’ll try to wear you out for years in court. Citizens don’t have the same deep pockets.
The system would theoretically be fair if everyone had access to top lawyers but yeah no Harvard law school graduate is going to pay off his debts with community service.
My morning run would be littered with more dead dogs than a Dr. Oz research lab if I shot every dog that approached or barked at me during it.
red flags and serial killers
if harming animals is one of the red flags of imminent serial killlerdom, then what does that say about all of these folks that we arm and then watch as they gleefully kill animals under the flimsiest of excuses?
Would we arm; Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, or Kristen Gilbert?
Of course, as bad as all that is, what does it say about those of us who keep giving folks like that their badges, their guns, and keep making excuses for their behavior?
Re: More than one cop has been a serial killer etc
Yeppers…
Re: Don't forget
CHP officer Paytor, convicted of murder of a woman he stopped and raped.
At Peyer’s trial, it was revealed that he had been targeting women along the interstate and had made predatory sexual advances on multiple female drivers.
Absolutely nothing in this dog’s body language suggests aggression. That’s just an excited dog who wants to say “hello.”
ACAB.
Even if it was aggressive, could the cop not have jumped on the car on back in the car? Nope, has a gun, is a cop, gonna stand his ground, be the boss, and shoot a dog.
How many have died because a cop wouldn’t back the hell off for a few minutes?
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If a dog murderer’s dog found a puddle of antifreeze in their yard, said dog would would gladly drink it all up, and then die. Hypothetically speaking of course.
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…all dogs aren’t that bright, and that’s not exactly nice.
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So would a toddler, but most people would object to cops shooting one.
[Encounters with police is going to get a lot worse if police-federalization becomes law … find out who the co-sponsors are and boot them out of office.]
“Congress Considering Police-federalization Bills, Could Pass Them After Midterms”, by the New American Magazine:
https://thenewamerican.com/congress-considering-police-federalization-bills-could-pass-them-after-midterms/
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Nothing in there is bad (on it’s face – no telling how these things are written, they may be pointless), and local police already take cash and 1033 hardware from the federal government. They also work together though fusion centers and other multi-jurisdictional activities.
Re: Preserving your essence?
Despite the typical almost-honest hair-on-fire rhetorical spin expected from a John Birch Society mag like “The New American”, the bill is merely a grant program for smaller departments that is aimed to address issues such as the one here – de-escalation training – along with other benefits such as signing bonuses for new hires, retention bonuses, etc. – real “radical” stuff. /snark
The bill is short and a simple read
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6448/text
Even the Bircher mag spells out the mundane proposals, but then couches them in Jack D Ripper craziness “OMG! THEY’RE GOING TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY BY PROVIDING GRANTS AND TRAINING FOR POLICE OFFICERS!!1!”
Kinda crazy that the John Birch Society is still around, but I’m sure some of its readers are addled on the extremist’s rush, along with preserving their Precious Bodily Fluids by drinking only Russian vodka and pure rain water.
nothing new here
In my 20 years as a prosecutor in a large west coast county DA’s office it was fairly common knowledge that many sheriff’s deputies and city police officers competed to be the first to shoot a dog at a crime scene.
Cops are both extremely aggressive and massively whimpy, traits I think we all recognize from our middle schools’ bullies.
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American cops. There’s a reason you don’t see many of these stories coming from elsewhere, and it’s not because they’re being suppressed.
There’s reasons, but from anecdotal personal experience, I think that US cops are trained to believe everyone else is out to kill them, whereas cops elsewhere are trained to think they’re part of a community and violence is best de-escalated.
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Also, other countries teach their cops to be assertive, while the US teaches them to be aggressive.
I watched this video years ago.
Its as if the Officer is Afraid and does NOT know Animals.
A dog jogging to you.
WHO taught this officer Anything about Animals.
HELP? What 5 10 minutes?
Can we shoot the cop?
If the cop had simply driven closer, he could have told the couple to secure their dogs before ever getting out of the car. Even as is, he could have easily just gotten back in the car and been safe.
Here’s a point I hope they bring up at trial: Average citizens outnumber police by a huge percentage. It therefore stands to reason that civilians encounter dogs more frequently than police do. Yet, average people aren’t killing dogs on a daily basis. Nor are they being mauled by dogs in any great numbers. Yes, it does happen, but the way cops react, you’d think every dog was a vicious monster. The fact that the vast majority of people live their lives without ever killing a dog or being attacked by them, demonstrates that cops have a warped view of pets.
Dog
Hope they bankrupt the horrid cop