City police dog shooting triggers lawsuit and questions about training, transparency Encounters between law enforcement and man's best friend don't always end well resulting in heartache for owners, an erosion of trust in police and costly legal settlements, researchers find.

Steve Orr | Democrat and Chronicle

Show Caption Hide Caption Rochester police bodycam footage of an officer shooting a dog RPD Bodycam footage of events around the shooting of Charles Dempsey's dog. Warning, this video contains the sound of gunshots and graphic language.

WARNING: The video in this story contains the sounds of gunshots and subject matter that may distress some viewers. This is a short excerpt of a much longer sequence of body-worn camera footage related to this incident.

A northeast Rochester man whose black Labrador retriever was shot and killed by a police officer in the family’s backyard has sued the city for damages.

The shooting of 4-year-old Tesla occurred after her owner, Charles Dempsey, let her out into the fenced-in backyard, not knowing a city police officer had just entered his property unannounced.

His lawsuit, filed last week, raises questions about police training — and transparency.

A horrified Dempsey witnessed the October 2018 incident in which Rochester officer Javier Algarin shot the dog as she ran toward him barking.

Dempsey’s 10-year-old daughter saw the immediate aftermath, during which her father charged into the backyard utterly incensed as the shaken police officer pointed his gun and warned him back.

"My client and his daughter are traumatized. They saw this happen," said their lawyer, Elliot Shields.

City spokesman Justin Roj declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The dramatic episode was captured on Algarin’s body-worn camera.

Shields maintains that the video clearly demonstrates training failures by city police.

Absent an emergency, officers should be instructed not to barge into someone’s yard without seeking permission, he said.

Rochester police also need proper training in dealing with canines, the lawyer said.

Rochester officers shot and killed about 50 dogs since 2013, Shields said, or one every six weeks or so. In a 2009 report, the Democrat and Chronicle found city police had averaged one dog shooting a month in the previous five years.

"There are other ways to handle a situation where a dog is running at an officer. Why is the first option to shoot the dog?" Shields asked.

The video from Algarin's body-worn camera that depicts Tesla's shooting, as well as video from nine other officers who were present at the scene, was released earlier this year by judicial order after Dempsey and Shields filed an open-records lawsuit to get them.

Shields, who won a preliminary victory in another suit against the city for release of police video, said he believes Tesla's case may mark the first occasion on which the city surrendered unredacted police footage in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Saying police wear body cameras in part so that the public can hold officers accountable for their actions, the lawyer considers the release of the video a victory for transparency.

"I think that they have changed their polices overall in response to the FOIL suits, which is good," Shields said.

Six seconds

The Tesla incident began after police swarmed into Dempsey’s neighborhood late one afternoon to disrupt the suspected sale of illegal drugs by people who had congregated there.

Police videos obtained by Dempsey and Shields through their open-records request and shared with the Democrat and Chronicle show two men being taken into custody. One surrendered to police peaceably in the yard behind Dempsey’s property, the other in a yard next door.

Neither man was found holding illicit substances, according to Shields. Officer Algarin's video shows him hopping a fence into the rear of Dempsey's yard, then climbing another fence into the yard next door. A dog house is visible there, but no dog appears.

Algarin began to search the ground for drugs that might have been tossed away. Though the videos make clear neither detained man had been on Dempsey’s property, another officer can be heard suggesting Algarin look for discarded drugs in Dempsey’s yard.

Algarin used a kid-sized picnic table to hop the chain-link fence back into Dempsey’s yard and took four slow steps forward. As the policeman moved, Dempsey opened the back door of his house and let Tesla, the black Lab, onto the porch.

Algarin appears to have been out of Dempsey’s line of sight, and Shields said Dempsey later made clear he had no idea a police officer was in the yard.

Tesla moved down the porch steps and then appeared a few paces in front of Algarin. As he saw the dog run toward him the officer shouted "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" Tesla barked several times, then two shots from Algarin's handgun can be heard.

The dog whined, fell, then slunk off around the corner. After a brief delay, Dempsey took her to a veterinarian’s office, but she died.

The entire episode consumed six seconds. Shields said it should never have happened at all.

Training inadequate?

"They didn’t have a warrant, they didn’t have his consent, they didn’t warn him they were going in his backyard. They could have knocked on his door. This was a completely avoidable event that happened,” he said.

"It's a negligent training claim," Shields said. "What they should have been trained to do, instead of just jumping the fence into the yard, was to go to the door and say 'Hey, we apprehended some guys next door. There may be evidence in your backyard. Can we have your consent to look in your yard?'

"But they didn’t do it that way. And because of that, Tesla is dead."

He also criticized city police for not properly instructing officers in how to interact with dogs.

"I anticipate their legal defense will be that they think it’s reasonable that the officer shot the dog. We think his actions in shooting the dog was completely unreasonable," Shields said. "If he’d been properly trained … he would not have shot the dog."

The lawyer has another client whose dog was shot by a Rochester officer in the client's fenced-in front yard. The body cam video in that case, released to Shields under an open-records request, shows the dog running toward the officer, who draws his gun and fires twice.

But was that the right reaction?

'Too risky for officers and dogs'

When it comes to police and dogs, the best approach might be to keep them apart.

"Plan A is to always be aware of indications that there may be a dog present, and to avoid encounters with dogs in any situation where that is feasible," said Janis Bradley of the National Canine Research Organization. Bradley and other staffers at the Dutchess County-based nonprofit have studied and consulted on police-dog interactions for years.

Public attention and concern about police shootings of dogs is growing. High-profile cases, especially those with video evidence, contribute to that concern, according to a study released earlier this year by the National Police Foundation.

"When pet dogs are shot by police, especially under questionable circumstances, this can erode public trust and legitimacy. In addition, a growing number of court cases are resulting in (legal) settlements between jurisdictions and residents ... with some awards being considerable from the tens of thousands to over a million (dollars) in some cases," the report said.

As a consequence, more law-enforcement agencies are turning to officer training.

But only eight states require some degree of training and the quality is uneven, Bradley said. New York is not one of the eight states.

Is there a dog in the yard?

Some individual police agencies also elect to train officers. In Rochester, recruits do receive training on dog behavior by the Humane Society of Greater Rochester said Investigator Jackie Shuman, the department's spokeswoman. She didn't describe the training and the humane society did not return a call for comment.

When the Democrat and Chronicle reported on police dog shootings 10 years ago, a humane society official pooh-poohed the need for training.

Some confrontations between police and canines are unavoidable, as when police raiding a drug house are met by an aggressive dog. But officers can learn measures to reduce the frequency of these incidents, the researcher Bradley said.

They can ask dispatchers to call ahead, or knock on the door to ask about the presence of a dog. Before entering a property, they can whistle or rattle the fence to see if a dog responds, or they can look for signs of a canine pet — a water bowl, a toy, a hunk of rawhide.

No water bowls or dog toys are visible in the various police videos made in Dempsey's yard that day.

But the police foundation study pointedly said, "Simply going into a fenced yard without warning is too risky for officers and dogs. There is almost always time to ascertain the presence of a dog."

Bradley, who declined an offer to see the video of Tesla's shooting or to offer an opinion on whether it was avoidable, said training can ingrain lessons on avoiding confrontations so that "it becomes part of situational awareness."

Training also can cover animal behavior and provide tips on how to gauge whether a dog is acting aggressively.

There are limits to this, Bradley warned.

"It’s not practical to imagine that all officers can be taught to be professional readers of dog body language," she said. "But it is important to know that the default response as a species for dogs is that when they’re approaching, they’re generally friendly. If dogs see you as a threat, they’re much more likely to retreat."

SORR@Gannett.com

Police dog shootings: National Police Foundation study

D&C 2009 investigation: Dog shootings by Rochester police