Police Respond To Call Of A Dog Off Leash . . . And Proceed To Shoot The Animal In Front Of Family Home

09d12f7841ecaa8d24955a68ee7b1777Village of South Holland police Officer Chad Barden and other unknown officers are being sued in federal court over another dog shooting.  In this case, the police arrived at the scene of a report of a dog off its leash in a suburb of Chicago. While they had dog catching poles, one of the officers shot Randy Green’s Cane Corso dog, Grady, who was sitting on the front porch of his family home when they arrived.  Green says that a videotape shows that the dog did not threaten or lunge at the officers before they and Barden shot him three times.

Police were at the scene for 20 minutes before the shooting. Grady reported got up and walked past them a couple times. There was no report of the dog being vicious or threatening people. At no point did the officers alert the family or use the dog catching poles according to the complaint.

Grady ran wounded into the back yard where Green found him and rushed him to the vet where he was treated. The complaint references an expert report finding that “video surveillance footage from the Green family residence revealed the absence of any charging, lunging or showing of teeth by the dog Grady and instead showed the dog Grady seeking ‘greater distance between the officer and himself,’ displaying ‘calming [body] signals’ by ‘looking away from the officers and showing his [Grady’s] flank,’ and moving in a ‘trot.'”

A month after the shooting and the complaint of Green, the South Holland police delivered a letter accusing Green of harboring a dangerous dog.

The presence of the alleged dog poles and the existence of the dog catching poles make this a promising case for the family. We have repeatedly seen dog shootings where lethal force seems the first response of officers.

Source: Courthouse

Kudos: Michael Blott

36 thoughts on “Police Respond To Call Of A Dog Off Leash . . . And Proceed To Shoot The Animal In Front Of Family Home”

  1. michaelb: glad Randy Green at least was compensated monetarily – but there was no APOLOGY from the Police Dept, or firing of the stupid officer/s who did the shooting ? – do they not realize that the publicity on this has now caused maybe several thousand US citizens to no longer trust THEIR local police ?? You cannot easily recover a reputation, and the reputation of police in general is going downhill by leaps and bounds. This will lead to serious consequences for all of us.

  2. Anna Morrison-Ricordati of the AMR Law Group, LLC in Chicago confirmed a $75,000 judgment was awarded to Randy Green, owner of the dog Grady, shot and wounded by Chad Barden of the South Holland, Illinois police department last June.

    Additionally, the dangerous dog ticket issued to Green- a common intimidation tactic used by Illinois police- was also rescinded.
    The shooting was captured on a surveillance camera.

  3. “… The sad part is police officers wonder why they are despised as a whole overall. Most cops are bad cops. They ruin it for the good cops.”

    The old saying:
    “98% of cops (lawyers, schoolteachers, judges, &c)
    give all the rest a bad name”

  4. “Anyone want to make a moral distinction between this cop and Michael Vick’s dogfighting enterprise?”

    Mike Vick got screwed. What do dogs do “in the wild”? Fight, of course. So somebody makes or loses a few buck$ on an organized dog fight–big deal.

    Jerk-off Jungle Jack Hanna of Columbus oHIo zoo “fame”, and other scumbag zoo keepers lock up animals of all kinds in cages and other sorts of restraining environments, and make big buck$ doing it, and it’s really okay with the ofay douchebags, but I’ve never seen any animal naturally caged or otherwise restrained in the wild.
    We sure got an issue with priorities, or maybe it’s they simply dont like folk making untaxed money. Sorta like the government–counterfeiters par excellence–busting counterfeiters, ucz they wont countenance any competition.

  5. Police shooting dogs without probable cause–these stories disturb me greatly because dogs are very important in my life. I never allow mine off-leash in the front of my house just to avoid anyone making a false claim against them, which is likely because many people are afraid of German Shepherd Dogs. (I also want to avoid the sudden excitement of chasing a rabbit and running in front of a car.)

    Unlike me, most of my friends who have Labs do allow their dogs off-leash, and they may wander a few houses away from home, loving, gentle dogs, and I can see this happening to these dogs, to my dogs’ friends, to the loving companions of my friends.

    There is no comfort in winning a lawsuit against police who, without cause, shoot your dog or your child. Dead is dead.

  6. J. Brian Harris–autistic people are not the only ones police accuse of lying. Some years back I had a new neighbor who was terrorizing me in a variety of ways. I went to the police station to ask them to put a trace and record on my phone line. The cop said, “What did you do to cause this?” I told him I thought I empowered the neighbor by keeping my blinds shut, disengaging my doorbell, etc., to prevent the harassment. He said, “Don’t give me that. In my 30 years on the force, I never met an innocent person.”

    Well, I was younger than and I went out to my car and sobbed until I was calm enough to drive home. Without police to “protect and serve.”

    As for the section of your post on trauma, I am going to copy and send that to a young man who is suffering PTSD. I think it will help him to read this and better understand what he is experiencing.

  7. One issue is that in many places if you call for emergency medical the cops come so now people think they need to make sure there is no pot, no loose dogs etc. before they call for ambulance.

  8. Squirrel = mace
    Dog = pistol
    Ewe = sub-machine gun
    Pony = Recoiless Rifle
    Caribou = TOW Missile
    Elephant = Cruise Missile
    Right Whale = W-44 Tipped ASROC

    It’s all a matter of proportionality folks.

  9. Perhaps they got their training from the idiot who maced the squirrel?

  10. I’d go with “prison” as an apt analogy though, W=^..^~.

    I don’t think we’re at the concentration camp stage (yet), but a prison with no walls is nonetheless a prison. What is a prison but a place where freedom is striped from a person? Where the inmates have restricted rights? The only difference is inmates got a trial. Congress and to some degree the judiciary have allowed to the Executive to create this sorry state of affairs and the first step down this road to damnation was the idiotic and anything but patriotic Patriot Act.

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