It’s a saddening fact on how many dogs get killed by cops because they felt “threatened”. Sadly in uncommon situations, the police have accidentally gone to the wrong house and shot the dog, just because the dogs were doing their jobs by protecting their owners. There’s been miscommunication where the victim(s) have made a call on a situation and the victim’s dog was shot and killed, because again they were protecting their owners. Then you have your breeds that look dangerous but most of the times aren’t, like pitbulls, known to be a dangerous breed, but most times they aren’t. People say that the cops need better training to use non-lethal techniques towards the dogs when on call.

Department of Justice (DOJ), estimates around 25-30 dogs a day are killed by cops, with numbers as high as 10,000 a year. You could face a longer jail sentence if you killed a police dog than if you killed a person or abuse a child. If a cop kills a dog, they’ll get up to little to no consequences. In 1 out of 5 cases, a child was in the line of fire or immediate area of shooting at a dog. A dog doesn’t even have to be an aggressive breed to be shot by a cop, even a small purse dog can be shot.

It bothers me so much that a cop would shoot a dog because they felt “threatened”, even though they’re almost 100% of times just curious or being protective of their owners. To justify shooting a dog, they should be attacking you, not just walking up. If a cop gets a call about a dog just being out and about with the owner, the cops are supposed to warn the owners to secure the dogs. If there’s a drug raid or anything for a cop to go inside a person’s house, they’re supposed to have animal control on standby. At least 48% of Americans own a dog or several, and that’s a lot. It makes me really wonder how the cops would feel if someone shot THEIR dog because they felt “threatened”. Law enforcement needs to understand that dogs don’t know the difference between cops and regular people, they’re just simply protecting their owner by coming onto their territory.