On the morning of June 10, 2018, Marianne Anniszkiewicz called Rochester Animal Services and police to report that a pit bull was loose on her strip of Belknap Street on the city’s west side.
As she recounted it, Animal Services officers arrived within a few minutes, picked up the dog, and took it away without incident.
Anniszkiewicz went about her day, setting up a pool in her gated yard with her three grandchildren and her three dogs: Sampson, a black Tibetan Mastiff mix, Sunny, a lab mix, and Angel, a pit bull.
About an hour later, though, Sampson would be dead, shot in the head by a police officer who responded to Anniszkiewicz’s call and encountered the dog upon entering the gate to her house.
“All of a sudden, my daughter in-law comes running into the house saying, they call me Mimi, ‘Mimi, they shot Sampson!’” Anniszkiewicz said. “And I said, ‘Who shot Sampson?’ and she goes, ‘The police.’"
A review of police body-worn camera footage of the incident revealed a raw and emotional scene. The police officer shot Sampson within seconds of entering the gated yard. Anniszkiewicz’s youngest grandson saw the shooting. His mother repeatedly moaned “No!” and asked the officer why he entered the yard. Backup soon arrived, and police photographers documented the scene.
When it was over, Anniszkiewicz said, police had not apologized and left her with a black garbage bag for Sampson’s remains. Police Department protocol calls for dog owners to dispose of their dead dogs.
“I told them what they could do with their garbage bag,” she said.
Sampson was one of 60 dogs to be shot at by Rochester police between 2015 and 2022, according to firearm discharge reports obtained by WXXI News under a Freedom of Information Law request. Forty-two of those dogs would be hit, and 22 would die.
Policy and training
Attention to shootings of dogs by law enforcement has risen in recent years. Many instances have been captured on video and posted online to public outrage. There is also a growing number of court cases that leave taxpayers on the hook for paying civil damages.
But national data on the prevalence of dog shootings by police does not exist.
A statistic often cited comes from a 2011 report by the Department of Justice and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services that estimated between 20 and 30 dogs are killed every day in the United States, although that figure cannot be verified.
What is clear is that the circumstances surrounding dog shootings vary wildly.
The discharge reports from Rochester show that sometimes the shooting involved a dog that attacked a civilian, or a dog that jumped out a window and dashed toward officers. In one case, at a house on Steko Avenue, a SWAT team killed a Rottweiler with a shotgun during a no-knock search for drugs while the owners weren’t home. No drugs were found in the search.
There are common threads in the reports, though. The officers in most cases described fearing for their or other officers’ safety as the dog charged them. For example, in July 2021, while officers arrested a man during a domestic violence incident, an officer shot a pit bull five times after it jumped out a window and “lunged” at them. In February 2020, an officer shot a dog from a porch as it ran towards her and she “feared for her safety.”
The vast majority of the dogs shot were identified as “pit bulls.”
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that about half of all police shootings involve a dog. In Rochester, dog shootings account for the second most common use of officer firearms, following deer. Police dispatched 96 deer, most of them injured and in distress, during the same timeframe.
The ASPCA contends that most shootings could have been prevented by improved communication between police and animal control officers, and better use of non-lethal options, like pepper spray and batons.
“Policies that require only that an officer ‘feel’ threatened set a very low threshold for justifying the killing of dogs,” read a statement from the ASPCA. “In virtually all cases we have examined, internal reviews of dog shootings have ruled them to be justifiable under existing policies, even though several cases have resulted in substantial civil judgments against police departments for wrongful destruction. Such incidents not only jeopardize the lives of companion animals, but also undermine the reputation of law enforcement agencies in the community.”
Of all of the dog shootings in the time period examined, just three involved an officer being bitten, according to discharge reports. Four others involved a civilian being attacked by a dog.
Rochester Police Department policy advises officers to take any measures necessary to secure a dog and to shoot it only as “a last resort.”
However, body-worn camera footage of dog shootings reviewed by WXXI News suggested some officers made little effort to secure a dog before drawing their gun and firing. In the case of the shooting of Sampson, for example, five seconds passed between the officer, a 20-year veteran of the department named Brian Cala, acknowledging spotting Sampson and shooting him. The dog barked once and did not bite Cala or his partner.
Cathleen Wood, an attorney with the national Animal Legal Defense Fund, said such incidents are common, and preventing them comes down to training. She contends an officer should be trained on all techniques that could be used to subdue a dog short of killing it.
“Probably the number one way of preventing incidents like this from happening is making sure officers have training on canine body language and de-escalation, like non-lethal methods of subduing dogs,” Wood said.
A 2019 report by the National Police Foundation and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Los Angeles found that states and local jurisdictions have been slow to adopt policies or training, despite litigation and public pressure. Just eight states have mandated training, according to the report. New York is not one of them.
“The lack of guidance to both civilians and officers, woefully deficient or non-existent canine behavior training programs, and absence of meaningful oversight other than through civil litigation renders humans and dogs alike incapable of modifying their behavior so as to prevent these tragedies,” the report reads.
Rochester city officials said that new police recruits for about the last five years have received training on dog encounters developed by the Humane Society of Greater Rochester. The training consists of a lengthy PowerPoint presentation that is meant to prevent dog bites, and advises officers on how to approach dogs, how to identify aggressive ones, and how to deescalate hostile interactions, including using chemical repellants, like pepper spray.
A Police Department training manual also offers guidance on interpreting a dog’s posture. It notes, for example, that a dog rolling on its back should be considered calm and submissive, while a dog standing with its tail upright should be considered alert and aggressive.
The city is currently facing seven lawsuits related to dog shootings by police, including the killing of Sampson.
Patrick Beath, the city’s deputy corporation counsel, has been litigating them. He said that, generally, the city does not believe the officers in question did anything wrong legally, but that it is always looking for ways to improve.
“In all the litigations, we’ve asserted defenses and denied any wrongdoing, and I would stand by those positions,” Beath said. “But there’s always a difference between what the Constitution, and the Fourth Amendment requires as a floor, and what you can set by policy as something higher than the floor.”
Most claims brought against municipalities argue a Fourth Amendment complaint of unlawful search and seizure.
In one of those cases, which was brought against Monroe County, the state’s highest court found in 2013 that an officer who shot and killed a dog while executing a no-knock search warrant was justified due to his belief that the dog posed “a threat to his safety or the safety of the community.”
The court also noted, however, that its decision should not be misconstrued to mean that all dog shootings can be justified.
“There very well may be circumstances under which a plaintiff could prove that lack of an adequate plan rendered the shooting of his or her dog unreasonable,” the decision reads. “...We urge the defendants to consider whether more comprehensive training and planning would better serve the public.”
Wood, of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, said court decisions on whether officers did anything wrong come down to subjective determinations of whether the officers were afraid.
“The reasonability is the real issue, it’s not even the officer’s subjective experience, it’s what would a reasonable officer do in that circumstance? How would they react?” Wood said. “...If they try to sue for a Constitutional violation (in the killing of the dog), that’s what it’s going to ultimately come down to, whether the officer acted reasonably.”In the Courts
In all of the dog shooting cases currently in litigation in Rochester, none of the officers involved were disciplined. Indeed, a search of police disciplinary files, which are public record, found that no current Rochester officer has ever been disciplined for shooting at or killing a dog.
Attorney Elliot Shields, who is representing the plaintiffs in all the lawsuits, contends that the city and Police Department have “tolerated or adopted an unofficial custom of permitting its officers to shoot and kill any dog they encounter in the course of their law enforcement duties, even if it is not objectively reasonable for the officer to believe the dog poses a threat of physical harm to the officer or others.”
“What the department is telling its officers by never having imposed discipline, or even having any officers retrained in any way, is that it’s OK, ‘What you did here is fine,'" Shields said. “They’re giving it a rubber stamp and ratifying that officer’s actions, and they’re saying to every other officer in the department, ‘If you encounter a dog under similar circumstances, you don’t have to worry, you can shoot the dog.’”
City Corporation Counsel Linda Kingsley, the city’s top lawyer, objected to that sentiment, stating that no officer wants to shoot a dog.
“It’s very, very easy to Monday morning quarterback these,” Kingsley said. “It’s very easy to look back and say, ‘Well, he didn’t have enough reason to be scared.’ You weren’t standing there, that officer was.”
Kingsley has defended the city in several dog shooting cases over the years. In most of them, she said, the dog had been “baring teeth” or had bitten the officer.
“Just because in none of those cases have we found an officer to have committed a wrongdoing doesn’t mean that we don’t hold officers accountable,” Kingsley said. “Maybe what that means is that, in our opinion, none of those officers did anything wrong.”
When asked directly whether there is any sense within the department or city government that there is a need for policy change, Kingsley paused.
“I think to whether we’re doing everything right, nobody’s perfect, I’m not going to stand here and say nothing ever happens that is wrong,” Kingsley said. “But what we are seeing is that the police are properly utilizing this decision to discharge. Like I said, not a happy decision, not an easy decision, but are properly utilizing it.”
Lingering Impact
Another client of Shields’s is Reginald McGill.
On Aug. 2, 2021, McGill called police to report three bullet holes in the front of his home on Jay Street, a result of random gunfire earlier that day.
In police body-worn camera footage, McGill can be seen chatting with two officers while his 4-year-old Bull Mastiff mix, Roxy, sits beside him. When a third officer, Trevor Jones, walks up the driveway, Roxy runs up to him. Jones shot Roxy in seconds. She later died from her wounds.
Standing on his porch, he said he and his family are still reeling from the incident.
“My daughter was actually the one holding her two fingers (against the wound),” McGill said, trailing off as he choked up. “She was the one trying to stop the bleeding of her dog. My little one, she’s about to be 6, she doesn’t like police period. She sees police and she runs in the house crying.”
McGill had Roxy cremated and placed in an ornate wooden box, marked by gold-tinged cutouts of dog paws. He said he’ll never own another dog.
“My children saw y’all shoot my dog, their dog, they had that dog since it was a puppy,” McGill said. “And y’all just came and took it away, and they’ll tell me just get another dog. I don’t want another dog, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want another dog living in this house, on this street.”
Five years later, Sampson’s killing lingers with Anniszkiewicz.
She said that her then-4-year-old grandson, Jackson, saw the shooting and that he and his siblings no longer felt comfortable at her home, which had been in her family since 1962. She eventually sold it.
Anniszkiewicz said Sunny, the lab mix that she had had for 11 years, was left shell-shocked by the shooting and had to be put down a month later due to a condition known as “failure to thrive.”
“I actually lost two dogs,” she said.
To date, Anniszkiewicz said she has yet to receive an incident report from the department on Sampson’s shooting, despite asking for one.
Today she lives with two dogs, an English-American bulldog named Oliver and a mutt named Abigail, in a country home in Wayne County. An inscription tattooed on her back reads, “You were my favorite hello and hardest goodbye” and “Shot by RPD 6-10-18.”
In her ongoing legal fight with the city, Anniszkiewicz is seeking damages for violations of her Constitutional protection from unlawful search and seizure. But she said one of her major requests is simpler than a cash settlement.
“Admitting they did something wrong would be nice,” she said.
