OCALA, Fla. – Ocala police Chief Mike Balken held a news conference Wednesday to announce changes in policy and the disciplining of officers in the fatal shooting of three dogs earlier this year.
The shooting occurred Jan. 29 after the Ocala Police Department responded to a request to perform a well-being check on a homeowner in the Bellechase subdivision, Balken said. The homeowner had called to request that Marion County Animal Services respond while “multiple aggressive dogs” allegedly tried to claw their way into his screened-in porch, yet MCAS was still some 45 minutes out and reportedly couldn’t get the homeowner back on the phone, hence the request for officers to respond sooner.
When the officers arrived, they could be seen on body-camera video entering the home and observing the dogs from behind glass. Now outside, exiting from the front of the home, the officers noticed an early-morning jogger running toward them and the dogs, the chief said.
“Fearing for the jogger’s safety, one of the officers yelled at the jogger to turn around and go the other way. Unfortunately, the dogs’ attention turned towards our police officers,” Balken said. “The dogs ran towards the officers, coming within just a few feet, and it was at that time that officers fired multiple rounds, striking all three dogs.”
Though all three dogs were shot, they were still alive in the moment, Balken described. Two of them lay in the driveway incapacitated as a third ran away yelping, the video shows.
The officers chose to run after the dog and fire several more shots at it, killing it behind the home, the chief said. Returning to the front yard, an officer discovered the two injured dogs were still alive and fired one more round into each of them, killing them as well, the chief said.
“Two of those dogs were immediately incapacitated in the driveway. The third dog was injured and ran towards the rear of the home. Fearing that the third dog might still be a threat to others in the area, our officers ran after the dog and while doing so, fired several more rounds until the last dog finally could succumb to his injuries,” Balken said. “The officers had returned to the front yard only to discover that the two other dogs were still alive in the driveway. At that point, one of my officers fired two more rounds, effectively euthanizing the animals.”
According to Balken, 30 shots were fired, leaving no other injuries but damaging the caller’s garage door and vehicle.
He said that he agreed with an internal administrative review which found the officers committed “a serious misconduct violation of our use-of-force policies.”
“Subsequently we moved to discipline both the officers. It is important to note here that the panel concluded that the initial shots fired by both of our officers at the front of the home were, in fact, justified. However, once the third dog ran off, it posed no further reasonable danger and therefore the remaining shots were unnecessary and potentially reckless in nature,” Balken said.
Policy changes have since been made within the police department related to officers’ use of force against aggressive animals, the chief said, adding the policy now requires officers to utilize non-lethal force options — ideally, pepper spray — whenever possible.
“In the end, I’m never going to be able to remove or want to remove an officer’s ability to use deadly force any time they reasonably believe that there’s a possibility of great bodily harm or death, and when that happens and when we get it right, I’m going to stand up here and stand behind our officers. 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 that doesn’t happen again,” Balken said. “(...) I think this was, you know, overkill, for lack of a better term.”
The dogs’ owners live in an adjoining neighborhood within the county’s jurisdiction, where MCAS had been requested to respond on at least three occasions dating back to October for the same animals, according to the chief.
“Those responses resulted in no less than 15 citations issued for the same type of aggressive behavior, along with a failure to provide proof of rabies vaccinations and things like that,” Balken said. “(...) We reached out to the (dogs’) owners in an attempt to conduct an internal affairs interview with them. They declined to come and meet with us on that. You know, their online presence has certainly been pretty damning on our agency, basically stating that we killed their pets for no reason.”
The officers who shot the dogs were reassigned, have since completed their disciplinary processes and will be back on their shifts this week if they aren’t already, Balken said.
The officer who did most of the shooting was given a 100-hour suspension, was removed from the field training and evaluation program and is undergoing retraining, according to the chief. That officer, who Balken said has been with the police department for four years, was training the other officer at the scene, whom Balken described as having “literally three weeks” of experience under their belt. The second officer received a 20-hour suspension and will be retrained, Balken said.