Vacaville police defend officer who punched dog in viral video
Some, including a K-9 trainer, said the officer's actions were unjustified.
(Graphic by Solano News Update)
The Vacaville Police Department on Tuesday said an investigation had been launched into the mindset of an officer who was captured on video delivering a punch to a police dog during a training session earlier in the week.
Though the investigation is still in the early stages, a Vacaville police spokesperson was quick to defend the officer, saying punches like the one seen on video are sometimes used as a corrective action in order to establish a sense of dominance.
“Although our canines appear to be pets, just like the ones we all have at home, they are quite different in many ways,” a spokesperson wrote on Facebook late Tuesday. “If left unguided by a handler, the decisions they make could lead to the injury of the dog, an officer or an innocent community member.”
The spokesperson said police dog training is a mixture of reward for good behavior and “physical discipline” when things go wrong. Through interviews with various local TV stations and at least one newspaper, a police captain said punching a dog is sometimes an acceptable part of training them.
“There [are] times during K-9 training, as I understand, that the dog can be struck,” Vacaville Police Department Captain Matt Lydon told KNTV (Channel 11) on Tuesday.
Solano News Update was the first news organization to report on the viral video, which was posted late Monday and drew swift condemnation from social media users on Facebook and Twitter. The man who filmed it, Roberto Palomino, said he was grabbing tools from a warehouse near Vaca Valley Parkway when he saw the officer striking the dog at least 10 times.
After witnessing the encounter, Palomino decided to grab his phone. He recorded a video approximately 30 second in length in which the officer straddles the dog on the ground. He punches the dog once, then looks around.
When he spotted Palomino, the man decided to stop recording. In a Facebook comment, he said he didn’t feel comfortable confronting the officer about the incident.
“Screaming at an armed Vacaville police officer is something I wouldn’t suggest to [anyone],” Palomino said.
Lydon confirmed to news outlets that the officer spotted on the video is assigned to the Vacaville Police Department. In an interview with the Vacaville Reporter, Lydon said the officer and the dog had been paired together for at least three or four months and were training near a firehouse on Monday.
The training involved the dog sniffing out narcotics. When he found the drugs, the dog was rewarded with a toy, but when the dog was asked to return the toy, he allegedly became aggressive and “lunged” at his trainer, Lydon said, adding that the public didn’t get to see the officer’s actions before the video begins.
“We don’t know what the handler experienced,” Lydon told the newspaper.
The agency’s explanation isn’t sitting well with people who say they have experience training the types of dogs used by the police department.
“There is no excuse for what was on that video,” Rachel Wilson, a resident of Reno who is married to the owner of Evolved K9 Training, wrote in a comment on the police department’s Facebook page. “It’s pretty sad that myself, a young woman, can handle police and military dogs without using abusive tactics, but your grown officers can’t.”
Palomino isn’t buying the police department’s explanation either.
“It was more than clear this is not training,” he wrote in a social media post on Tuesday.
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