Forum News Service

ATWATER –

An Atwater woman has filed a formal complaint against the Atwater police chief for trespassing on her property and killing her young son's pet chicken — leaving the hen's decapitated head just feet from the backyard chicken coop.

Ashley Turnbull said she knows she violated the city's ordinance that prohibits fowl and acknowledges she was told Aug. 7 by police to remove the three chickens and two ducks.

But she said Police Chief Trevor Berger went too far when he came onto her property about a week later, when nobody was home, and clubbed, killed and decapitated a small, red hen with a shovel.

"The chicken was like a puppy dog to my son," said Turnbull. "You wouldn't do that to a puppy."

Berger said he was simply enforcing the city ordinance that has been on the books since 1960 and was responding to a "frustrated" neighbor's repeated complaints, including a report Aug. 16 that one of Turnbull's chickens was running loose in the residential area near the elementary school.

"I'm sorry it had to happen that way," said Berger, adding that he didn't intend to leave the severed chicken head in the yard to send a message to the homeowners.

Berger said he thought the head was still attached to the chicken when he carried the carcass away.

Berger said killing the chicken was justified.

"It's against city ordinance for a chicken to be in the city and running around in people's yards," he said.

Turnbull said Berger didn't handle the situation professionally.

"I still feel he owes my son an apology and he owes us a chicken," said Turnbull, who filed a written complaint with the Atwater police commissioner Aug. 20.

She has not yet heard a response, but the issue is expected to be addressed Wednesday during the Atwater City Council meeting when, ironically, Berger said he intends to present a proposed ordinance to allow chickens in the city, that the council asked him to prepare earlier this year.

City Clerk Goldie Smith said she was in the process of researching chicken ordinances when Turnbull's neighbor, Dick Rierson, brought pictures of Turnbull's muddy poultry pen to the August City Council meeting.

Smith said the council decided at that point to inform Turnbull, and other residents who had chickens, to remove them.

Rierson said he was concerned about having chickens in town living "in filth like that" and that he feared it would attract rats.

He seemed surprised to learn that the police chief had killed one of the chickens.

"I'm not for mistreating any animal," he said. "I'm not for killing a chicken for the sake of killing a chicken."

But Rierson said the ordinance prohibiting livestock was put in place for a reason and if killing the chicken was the only way for the police chief to address the problem, "then I'd say he's doing his job."

Berger said when he got the call Aug. 16, he saw the chicken in a yard next to Turnbull's house. He said he tried for 10-15 minutes to catch the chicken or chase it back into the pen.

"I feel like I made a good effort to get it back in," he said.

But when the other two chickens and two ducks in the fenced pen started to get out, Berger said he closed the door that he'd opened, grabbed a shovel leaning against Turnbull's garage and "dispatched" the chicken.

Since there were children playing in the adjacent yard, Berger said he didn't want to use his gun to kill the chicken and the shovel was the "safest way to dispatch it."

It was the same process he would use if there was a report of a skunk, he said.

Turnbull said she doesn't understand that logic.

"I couldn't perceive a chicken being a threat to anybody," said Turnbull.

Turnbull's neighbor, Jason Shoutz, said he saw Berger walked up to the chicken by the coop and swing the shovel "up and down."

His young daughter was in the yard at the time and saw the officer kill the chicken.