Cop Actually Charged for Shooting Small Dog Who Made Him ‘Fear for His Life’

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Purcell, OK — An allegedly inebriated officer — who fell from his motorcycle and proceeded to shoot a tiny dog with his service weapon for no reason — has now been charged in the incident.

“They said that he fell over on his motorcycle and that he had shot my dog, Champion,” the dog’s owner told KFOR in October.

“It caught this leg, and hopefully if I can keep the infection out of his joint, he won’t lose his paw,” the owner added hopefully of where a bullet from Purcell Police Officer Richard Kyle Glasgow’s service revolver entered the beloved pet’s body.

Glasgow has now been charged with ‘one count of reckless conduct with a firearm’ — for which the officer ‘demonstrated a conscious disregard for the safety of others and created a situation of unreasonable risk and probability of death or great bodily harm to others.’

Considering the portrait of grave fecklessness described in charges, and that the officer left the creature bloodied, suffering, and ultimately forced to endure an amputation, ‘reckless conduct’ hardly encompasses the scale of the threat this drunken cop posed.

NewsOn6 briefly summarizes, “On Oct. 8, 2016 Glasgow told authorities he was riding his motorcycle in McClain County when he said a dog named Champion came out after his motorcycle and he feared for his life so he fired a warning shot into the ground and another shot at the dog. Champion was wounded and lost his right front paw as a result of the shooting.”

Neighbors noted Glasgow, who lives in the area, had been known to complain about Champion running loose in the streets — but that had not happened on October 8.

“He fell over and then he took his gun and then shot twice,” the dog’s owner lamented, adding witnesses “heard two shots and then the dog yelped.”

Glasgow’s erratic actions — firing a weapon at a friendly dog not even tall enough to reach an average adult’s knees — might be explained in part, though not excused, by what officers responding to the shooting discovered when they arrived.

“While talking to Glasgow I could smell a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from his person, and could hear slurred speech as he spoke,” asserted an unnamed deputy attending the scene, in a police report cited by NewsOn6.

Responding officers made no arrests at the time — and have not elaborated on that failure — despite descriptions like the aforementioned which strongly indicate Glasgow had imbibed too much to have been driving.

Adding further insult, “authorities took the officer’s patrol car that he drove back from the scene,” as KFOR paraphrased the incident report.

Also, as News 9 reported in October when the original incident happened, Glasgow had previously threatened to shoot the dog.

Glasgow reported a previous incident with the dog while riding his motorcycle in the same area – stating the dog “ran out into the street almost causing him to wreck his motorcycle with his child on the back of it.” So Glasgow said he told the landowner “she needed to keep her dog put up or he would shoot it.” Friday afternoon, the landowner Sherry Reece said she believed he mistook Champion for the neighbor’s German Shepherd. “He told me that two German Shepherds were running out toward him on his motorcycle and he had his child with him and he had to swerve and he almost fell over with his child,” she explained. “I said ‘OK I’ll tell Junior. He’s the one that owns the German Shepherds.’”

Indeed, Glasgow — who remains employed by the Purcell Police Department, but has been gifted a paid suspension pending the outcomes of multiple investigations — would almost certainly have had to perform sobriety tests for officers, were he not an officer, himself.

Without additional, theoretical charges for operating under the influence, Glasgow faces the possibility of just six months to one year in county jail and a fine of between $50 and $500 — a striking contrast to what a non-cop perpetrator would in the same situation.

Another disparity between the treatment of cop lawbreakers and civilian offenders is that, had Champion been employed as a trained law enforcement K-9 and Glasgow an ordinary civilian, he would have been charged with a federal offense.

ABC News reported in 2000, upon the passing of new legislation designed to further protections for animals trained to work as law enforcement officers,

“Under the Federal Law Enforcement Animal Protection Act, which went into effect this week, anyone convicted of purposely assaulting, maiming, or killing federal law enforcement animals such as police dogs and horses could be fined at least $1,000 and spend up to 10 years in prison. Previously, the animals were covered by a variety of state, rather than federal, laws.”

But Champion isn’t a police K-9. Thus his life — and the gunshot wound resulting from an officer’s wanton disregard for safety — could be worth as little as $50, per Oklahoma law.

Such disproportionate penalties for the law enforcement community compared to, well, everyone else, echoes the precipitous chasm cleaving the nation between obdurate supporters of the Thin Blue Line and those who know the bequeathed badge and gun do not grant extra rights.

Countless family pets, like Champion, have been unfortunate enough to encounter police officers far too skittish to have ever considered the profession of law enforcement.

The Free Thought Project contacted the Purcell Police Department on a particularly pressing aspect of this case, which hasn’t been made entirely clear in news reports of the shooting — whether or not Glasgow was on duty at the time — but, at the time this article went to press, had yet to receive a return call.

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