Oakland Officer Shoots Family Dog Dead, Leaves Note

Posted: 8:51 pm PDT September 30, 2010
Updated: 8:29 am PDT October 1, 2010

OAKLAND, Calif. -- An Oakland family was still waiting to get their dog's remains back from police Thursday night, two days after an officer shot the animal in their own back yard and left behind only a note.

When Mary Kate Hallock arrived home on Tuesday, she immediately sensed something was wrong.

Her front gate was open and at the front door, instead of the family dog, she found a note from an Oakland police officer.

'The officer wrote ‘OPD responded to your residence to investigate a burglary alarm,’” explained Hallock.

The Hallock's burglary alarm went off around 11:30 Tuesday morning. The officer said when he went to check the back yard he saw an open door and the dog -- a yellow lab named Gloria -- charged at him.

“’While checking rear perimeter, lab advanced on officer in threatening manner before being shot and killed," read Hallock from the note the officer left.

Hallock said her family was stunned by the news.

'I'm just really upset and sad,” said her daughter Isabel Hallock. “And it really didn't need to happen, I think, but it did."

Isabel and her brother Matthew Hallock said Gloria had been part of the family since she was a puppy. They said she was not an aggressive dog.

"I'm a preschool teacher. This dog goes to school with me. It's around kids all the time,” said Mary Kate Hallock. “It's just a gentle giant and is eleven and a half years old also."

The incident wasn't the first issue Oakland police have had with animals this year. Back in May, there was widespread outcry after officers cornered a small deer in the backyard of a home in a quiet residential neighborhood and shot it to death before animal control personnel could arrive on the scene.

An Oakland police spokeswoman said the officer followed proper protocol. The officer had thought it might be a burglary in progress and said he feared for his safety when the dog ran toward him.

He left the note to alert the owners before taking the dog's body to animal control.

That response offered little solace to the Hallock family, who said police protocol should be reconsidered.

“We just keep going back to why shoot the dog?” said Mary Kate Hallock. “Shoot and kill the dog? We would just love for some other family not to go through what we're going through, ‘cause it's heartbreaking."

The Hallocks hope police in the future will consider using pepper spray or a Taser on dogs instead of a gun.

From: http://www.ktvu.com/news/25234528/detail.html