The ASPCA estimates that about half of all police shootings in the US involve dogs, with 20 to 30 dogs being killed every day (mostly 'pit bulls'). The ASPCA contends that most of the shootings could have been prevented by the use of non-lethal options like pepper spray.
GINO FANELLI: On the morning of June 10, 2018, Marianne Anniszkiewicz called Rochester Animal Services and police to report that a pit bull was loose on her strip of Belknap Street on the city’s west side.
As she recounted it, Animal Services officers arrived within a few minutes, picked up the dog, and took it away without incident.
Anniszkiewicz went about her day, setting up a pool in her gated yard with her three grandchildren and her three dogs: Sampson, a black Tibetan Mastiff mix, Sunny, a lab mix, and Angel, a pit bull.
About an hour later, though, Sampson would be dead, shot in the head by a police officer who responded to Anniszkiewicz’s call and encountered the dog upon entering the gate to her house.
“All of a sudden, my daughter in-law comes running into the house saying, they call me Mimi, ‘Mimi, they shot Sampson!’” Anniszkiewicz said. “And I said, ‘Who shot Sampson?’ and she goes, ‘The police.’”
A review of police body-worn camera footage of the incident revealed a raw and emotional scene. The police officer shot Sampson within seconds of entering the gated yard. Anniszkiewicz’s youngest grandson saw the shooting. His mother repeatedly moaned “No!” and asked the officer why he entered the yard. Backup soon arrived, and police photographers documented the scene.
When it was over, Anniszkiewicz said, police had not apologized and left her with a black garbage bag for Sampson’s remains. Police Department protocol calls for dog owners to dispose of their dead dogs.
“I told them what they could do with their garbage bag,” she said.
Sampson was one of 60 dogs to be shot at by Rochester police between 2015 and 2022, according to firearm discharge reports obtained by WXXI News under a Freedom of Information Law request. Forty-two of those dogs would be hit, and 22 would die…
Attention to shootings of dogs by law enforcement has risen in recent years. Many instances have been captured on video and posted online to public outrage. There is also a growing number of court cases that leave taxpayers on the hook for paying civil damages.
But national data on the prevalence of dog shootings by police does not exist.
A statistic often cited comes from a 2011 report by the Department of Justice and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services that estimated between 20 and 30 dogs are killed every day in the United States, although that figure cannot be verified.
What is clear is that the circumstances surrounding dog shootings vary wildly.
The discharge reports from Rochester show that sometimes the shooting involved a dog that attacked a civilian, or a dog that jumped out a window and dashed toward officers. In one case, at a house on Steko Avenue, a SWAT team killed a Rottweiler with a shotgun during a no-knock search for drugs while the owners weren’t home. No drugs were found in the search…
The vast majority of the dogs shot were identified as “pit bulls.”
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that about half of all police shootings involve a dog. In Rochester, dog shootings account for the second most common use of officer firearms, following deer. Police dispatched 96 deer, most of them injured and in distress, during the same timeframe.
The ASPCA contends that most shootings could have been prevented by improved communication between police and animal control officers, and better use of non-lethal options, like pepper spray and batons…
In all of the dog shooting cases currently in litigation in Rochester, none of the officers involved were disciplined. Indeed, a search of police disciplinary files, which are public record, found that no current Rochester officer has ever been disciplined for shooting at or killing a dog.
Attorney Elliot Shields, who is representing the plaintiffs in all the lawsuits, contends that the city and Police Department have “tolerated or adopted an unofficial custom of permitting its officers to shoot and kill any dog they encounter in the course of their law enforcement duties, even if it is not objectively reasonable for the officer to believe the dog poses a threat of physical harm to the officer or others”…
Five years later, Sampson’s killing lingers with Anniszkiewicz.
She said that her then-4-year-old grandson, Jackson, saw the shooting and that he and his siblings no longer felt comfortable at her home, which had been in her family since 1962. She eventually sold it.
Anniszkiewicz said Sunny, the lab mix that she had had for 11 years, was left shell-shocked by the shooting and had to be put down a month later due to a condition known as “failure to thrive.”
“I actually lost two dogs,” she said.
To date, Anniszkiewicz said she has yet to receive an incident report from the department on Sampson’s shooting, despite asking for one.
Today she lives with two dogs, an English-American bulldog named Oliver and a mutt named Abigail, in a country home in Wayne County. An inscription tattooed on her back reads, “You were my favorite hello and hardest goodbye” and “Shot by RPD 6-10-18.”
In her ongoing legal fight with the city, Anniszkiewicz is seeking damages for violations of her Constitutional protection from unlawful search and seizure. But she said one of her major requests is simpler than a cash settlement.
“Admitting they did something wrong would be nice,” she said.
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