From what we understand, it looks like a Gilroy police officer
did everything right in the recent fatal shooting of a loose,
aggressive 150-pound dog.
From what we understand, it looks like a Gilroy police officer did everything right in the recent fatal shooting of a loose, aggressive 150-pound dog.
While we’re sure Mark Oliveira and his family are grieving the unfortunate loss of their dog, a 3-year-old male rottweiler named Schwartz, that’s no excuse for wasting taxpayer money and police time by suing the city and police for a problem that was the dog owners’ responsibility.
It was Oliveira’s responsibility to make sure his dogs were not running loose, and the consequences that can follow failure to do so – including, sadly, the fatal shooting of one of his dogs – are his to bear. Those consequences should not be shouldered by the citizens of Gilroy.
Given that these two dogs are large breeds, given recent history of serious and sometimes fatal dog maulings, given that these dogs were behaving aggressively, and given that it might not have been the first time these dogs escaped their yard, we see little legal or moral ground on which Oliveira could base any lawsuit.
Police and witness accounts of the dogs’ behavior – cornering people, barking aggressively and charging anyone who approached – stand in stark contrast to Oliveira’s contention that the dogs “had not one drop of violence in them.”
When faced with a barking, charging, 150-pound rottweiler that’s 20 feet away and closing, we have no problem with a police officer defending himself or herself with deadly force.
Despite Oliveira’s incomprehensible statements that “you don’t just open fire and kill someone’s dog,” that’s clearly not what the GPD officer did. He or she killed a charging, potentially deadly animal – an animal that should have been penned in its own yard, not menacing law-abiding citizens blocks from its home.
The only issue we take with the Gilroy Police Department’s handling of the situation is after the fact. They’ve refused to name the officer involved in the shooting or disclose the amount of animal control training he or she has received.
That close-ranks, don’t-talk-to-the-community position – unfortunately, the default position of the GPD – does nothing to bolster their contention that their officers did everything by the book in this case.
If they have nothing to hide, the GPD needs to stop acting like they’re hiding something.
An open door, everything’s-out-in-the-open policy will build trust with the community. Their current behavior does the opposite.
Oliveira and his family have our sympathies on the loss of their beloved pet. We hope that they move through their grief, fix their fence and opt not to burden their neighbors and the GPD with a frivolous lawsuit.
