Police Can Shoot Your Dog for No Reason
If Police Shoot Your Canis familiaris, Tin You Sue?
For various reasons, police sometimes shoot and kill dogs. But their owners typically have recourse to sue.
You probably won't run across a police officer serve whatever jail time for shooting your canis familiaris, but y'all tin can make him or her pay for it in court. However, police force officers accept built-in legal defenses to suit.
So when law shoot your canis familiaris, when can you sue?
Excessive Forcefulness, Illegal Seizure
Because dogs aren't people, they lack Fourth Amendment rights and are considered "property" under the law.
This means that unlike a normal case of police brutality, the standards of probable cause and reasonability that apply to use of force on humans exercise not transfer to dogs. And so suing police for shooting your dog must be washed nether a theory of illegal seizure, essentially challenge that your property (i.eastward., your canis familiaris) was illegally seized by police.
Sometimes there will be both human being and canis familiaris victims of police misconduct, so both excessive force and illegal seizure claims tin can be made. In i such case, a Chicago jury awarded a family unit $243,000 when an officer killed their ix-yr-old Labrador, likewise as $ninety,000 for mistreating one of its owners.
Watching an officer impale your dog can potentially be the basis for an emotional distress merits under this illegal seizure foundation. Likewise, if police were unlawfully present on your property when your domestic dog was shot, thus violating your Fourth Subpoena rights, you may sue.
Qualified Immunity and Officer Safety
There are 2 legal hurdles yous'll accept to overcome in club to successfully sue a police officer for killing your dog, namely:
- Did the officer violate your clearly established ramble rights?
- Was the domestic dog a threat to officer safety?
The offset question relates to qualified immunity. An officer may be allowed to lawsuits equally long every bit he or she is acting in good faith to not violate a person's constitutional rights. For dog-shooting cases, this means your Fourth Amendment rights, so an illegal entry or illegal abort would suffice.
The question of officer safety is much more slippery. Courts may defer to an officer's training and experience in cases when they feel threatened enough to employ force on an beast. Unless the officer clearly ignored police procedure in dealing with animal threats, this may be a hard factual battle.
But don't give up hope. Yous can sue and even win when constabulary shoot and kill your canis familiaris -- though you generally have to file a government tort claim commencement before y'all can proceed with a lawsuit. Considering suing the law can become complicated, consulting an experienced personal injury lawyer is probably your best bet.
Related Resources:
- SLC Police Shoot, Kill Canis familiaris During Search for Missing Kid (FindLaw'due south Blotter)
- When Are Constabulary Allowed to Shoot, Kill Dogs? (FindLaw's Blotter)
- Cops Kill Dog, Family unit Sues (FindLaw's Injured)
- La. Man Sues for $30M: Police Dog Bite to Penis (FindLaw's Injured)
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Source: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/personal-injury/if-police-shoot-your-dog-can-you-sue/