At 7:00 a.m. on January 21, 1998, entry teams of San Jose police officers moved simultaneously on nine residences and the San Jose Hells Angels clubhouse across Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. The warrants came out of the investigation into the beating death of Kevin Sullivan at the Pink Poodle nightclub the previous August, led by Santa Clara County Sheriff's Deputy Linderman. Neither Robert and Lori Vieira nor James Souza had been accused of any crime. The entry-team leaders had been given about a week to plan.
At the Vieira property — a house and junkyard ringed by a tall, padlocked cyclone fence — Officer Nieves had been assigned to handle any dogs. According to Officer Messier's declaration, quoted by the Ninth Circuit, "I did not give Officer Nieves any specific instructions as to how to deal with any dogs." Nieves carried a shotgun. His plan, as the court described it, was to hope the dogs stayed away from the gate, and if they did not, to poke them through the fence and try to scare them.
Three large dogs resembling Bullmastiffs came to the gate barking and growling. As officers reached through the fence to cut the lock, one of the dogs jumped and snapped at their hands. The officers carried pepper spray; the court found none of them tried to use it. Nieves yelled, pushed one dog back with his shotgun barrel, then fired. The first dog went down; two more blasts critically wounded a second; a fourth shot to the head killed the first. Lori Vieira's journal, cited in the opinion, records her being handcuffed a few yards from where her dog Sam lay dead and bleeding.
At the Souza house, officers knew there were two guard dogs, one a Rottweiler, and had seen the warning sign on the side gate. Their plan, the court wrote, was either to "isolate" or shoot the dogs; there was no plan for isolating them and no intention of asking Souza to secure the Rottweiler himself. Souza was not home. Officer Manion, patrolling the backyard with an MP-5, stated that the Rottweiler appeared ten to fifteen feet away, gave a low growl and advanced: "I feared that the dog was going to attack me and I immediately discharged my firearm pulling the trigger twice." The Rottweiler died instantly. A small white dog in the yard was left unharmed.
Three dogs were killed. The officers also carted away "literally truckloads" of Hells Angels indicia, including motorcycles, a mailbox, a refrigerator door and a jack-hammered slab of sidewalk.
On April 4, 2005, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of qualified immunity to the officers, holding that the shootings were an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment: there were no exigent circumstances, the officers had a week to consider their options, and they developed no realistic plan other than shooting. That ruling did not find the officers liable; it meant the suit could proceed. The Supreme Court declined to review it that December.
Santa Clara County, which had argued its deputies were executing a lawful warrant and should not be held liable, then agreed to pay $990,000 — $530,000 in attorneys' fees and $460,000 divided among 15 club members and associates. A settlement is a payment, not an admission. "They were beloved pets," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Karen Snell, said. No discipline for any officer is reported in either source.