OCALA, Fla. — Two Ocala police officers were suspended after killing some aggressive dogs.
The incident has the department making changes to policy. The shooting was all caught on bodycam.
Startling moments, as Ocala police respond to a call involving 3 aggressive dogs outside someone’s Bellechase lanai trying to get inside. On bodycam you can hear the homeowner say, “That one right there tried to dig in the screen. “The officer responds, “This is crazy!”
The homeowner told them, that he ran into his house after they tried biting him in the yard.
Investigators say, they called Animal Services and waited 45 minutes. As they warned a passing jogger about the dogs, the pit bulls then turned their attention to the officers.
According to investigators, the officers shot two dogs in the driveway and then shot another multiple times as it ran away. Police Chief Mike Balken says, 31 shots were fired. “The dogs ran towards the officers, coming within just a few feet, and it was at that time that our officers fired multiple rounds striking all three dogs.”
But it was the shooting involving the third dog that the Chief says, violated procedure.
Once the third dog ran off it posed no reasonable danger, and therefore the remaining shots were unnecessary, potentially reckless in nature. The Chief says the officer who fired the shots was being trained at the time, he was suspended for 20 hours. The officer training him received 100 hours of suspension. “Unfortunately, this was a tragic event, which I believe we simply got wrong. Our actions were unreasonable. We’ve had to take measures internally to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”
The officer in training was identified as Officer Jordan Woods and the person training him was Officer John McCurdy. The incident has the agency making changes to procedure, Balken says, “That policy now requires officers to utilize non-lethal force options whenever possibly possible, and highly encourages pepper spray aids the preferred method for dealing with aggressive animals. “The Chief also wants to work with Animal Services to prevent this from happening in the future. As for the dog’s owner Bryan Strawn, he’s contacting an attorney, “I literally can’t close my eyes without thinking about my baby runner trying to run home and that cop gunning him down.” And Strawn says his dogs got out by jumping over a broken fence. The Chief wants to remind everyone to keep their pets secured.
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