At about 7 a.m. on Wednesday, July 9, 2014, Larry Arman was asleep on the first floor of his family's house on Maryland Avenue in St. Paul with his two sons, ages 4 and 7. Camille Perry, his fiancee and the boys' mother, was eight months pregnant and getting ready for work. The family's two pit bulls were by the front door: Laylo, who was 10, and Mello, who was 5. Minneapolis police had obtained a no-knock search warrant for drugs and weapons, and the St. Paul police SWAT team was there to execute it.

Perry said she saw the front door fly open and a SWAT officer shoot the dogs. She ran to her sons and threw herself over them. "The whole time all I could scream was, 'Stop shooting, stop shooting!'" she told the Pioneer Press. The couple said the dogs had been sleeping and did nothing more than bark when officers rammed the door, and that six shots were fired. "Our oldest dog actually ran back to protect us in front of the bed and they kept shooting her, even though we were laying right there," Perry said. They estimated they were two to three feet from Laylo. Arman, who told KMSP he was on a mattress with his children, described the sound: "Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Right in front of us."

Police described it differently. "An officer believed they were acting in an aggressive manner," said Sgt. Paul Paulos, a St. Paul police spokesman. "He thought he'd be bit or the dogs would bite one of the team members." Dave Titus, president of the St. Paul Police Federation, said he was told the family was not in danger and that the dogs were "an immediate threat to officers."

The search turned up a bong, a grinder that may have had marijuana residue, and clothing, Arman said. No one was arrested. Next door, Nicole Miller said Laylo and Mello greeted her every morning: "They wouldn't hurt a fly, they'd lick you to death." A city Department of Safety and Inspections spokesman said animal control had several calls between 2006 and 2010 about Arman's dogs running at large, but that he saw no reports of Laylo or Mello biting anyone.

St. Paul rarely sends SWAT to serve warrants, and rarely with this result: Paulos said the team served 32 warrants in 2013, encountering six dogs with no injuries to the animals, and 23 warrants so far in 2014, encountering four dogs without incident.

The accountability record

The Armans sued in federal court under Section 1983. Their complaint identified the shooters as St. Paul officers Jason Brubaker and Salim Omari, and alleged they entered without warning, began firing, and had been briefed that the dogs were aggressive when they were not. The warrant application, written by Minneapolis Officer Matthew Severance, relied on a confidential informant who said Arman kept "two very aggressive pit bull dogs in the house for protection."

In a January 22, 2021 order, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel noted that the St. Paul defendants conceded the Fourth Amendment unreasonable-seizure and excessive-force claims against Brubaker and Omari should proceed, and dismissed without prejudice the probable-cause claim against Severance, holding the complaint pleaded no facts showing he recklessly disregarded the truth. That ruling decided the sufficiency of a pleading, not whether the shooting was reasonable; no court has ruled on that.

Paulos said police always review cases in which an officer fires a gun. No discipline of any officer has been reported, no charges were brought, and no settlement or judgment has been reported.