Earlier this month, a police officer was hospitalized after he was shot by his partner while responding to a non-criminal call about a suicidal person. The suicidal person was not a threat and the officer was not defending himself from a human when he fired his gun. Instead, when the officers walked up to the man’s home, the neighbor’s bulldog came toward one of them, who opened fire to kill the dog.
But he missed the dog.
“The dog charged at the officers,” Detroit Police Commander Brian Harris told WXYZ. “The officers fearing for their safety, one officer fired one round at the dog. The round didn’t strike the dog, it struck his partner in the lower right calf.”
The point about the dog “charging” the officers is contested, however. In the police report from the incident, a witness told investigators that the dog never once charged and was merely barking at the officers.
“We let the dog out to use the bathroom from the side door,” Tiara, the niece of the dog owner told WXYZ. “The police were walking towards this door, the dog comes up, she’s protecting her area. So she just came out and she barked, she didn’t jump on them, she didn’t lunge and he was just going crazy with the gun. I thought he was gonna shoot me because he was swinging the gun all over the place. I almost had a heart attack because she’s not aggressive, she doesn’t even have teeth, she’s old.”
Hellbound and Down 