The Owner Said the Dog Wasn't Friendly. An Ogden Officer Shot It During a Welfare Check.

On August 28, 2018, Ogden police officers were at a Utah home on one of the quieter assignments in law enforcement: assisting child protective services with a welfare check. Inside was a pit bull that, by its own owner's description, was not friendly.

According to the account reported by the Deseret News, the dog attacked Officer J. Grimes and tried to bite him. Grimes fired one round. The dog was hit, but its injuries were superficial. It was treated, it survived, and it went home to its owner. Its name was not reported.

Within days, Police Chief Randy Watt announced the department's conclusion: the officer had acted within department policy. The body camera footage was released.

Parts of this record deserve to be acknowledged plainly. The video was released rather than withheld. The warning that the dog was not friendly came from the owner, not from a police account later contradicted by footage. One round was fired, the injuries were superficial, and the dog was treated and returned rather than killed. As the facts stand in the record, this is the version of these encounters that ends with a living dog.

But the structure of the review deserves to be stated just as plainly. The person who decided whether Officer Grimes acted properly was Officer Grimes's own chief. The standard the shooting was measured against was the department's own policy — a document the department wrote for itself. No outside review was reported. No independent examination of whether firing a gun during a child-welfare visit was the only available option appears anywhere in the record. "Within policy" is not a finding that a shooting was necessary, or unavoidable, or well handled. It is a finding that the department's rules, as the department wrote them, permit what its officer did. The public was shown the footage; the department kept the verdict for itself.

That is where the accounting ends. The chief said the officer acted within policy. The footage was released. The dog was treated and went home. No discipline was reported. No charges were reported. No lawsuit appears in the record. The department investigated itself, agreed with itself, and closed the file.