Thomas Schmidt was the one who called the police. On July 19, 2026, Schmidt dialed 911 and claimed he had been assaulted after being ejected from Hill Station, a restaurant in Little Rock's Heights neighborhood. Officer Brandon Foster-Todd of the Little Rock Police Department responded.
Outside Schmidt's home, Schmidt's dog — a Labrador, one year old, unleashed — approached the officer. Foster-Todd fired, killing the dog. He said he feared being bitten.
That fear is the officer's stated reason, and the record contains no account contradicting the basic sequence: a 911 call, a response, an unleashed young dog approaching, a shot. The department later released body-camera video of the events that led up to the shooting.
It is the aftermath that deserves attention, because of how precisely it sorted out who would face consequences.
The man who made the 911 call was arrested. Schmidt was charged with second-degree terroristic threatening, disorderly conduct, and attempting to influence a public servant — three criminal charges arising from an episode that began with his own call for help and ended with his dog dead outside his home.
Officer Foster-Todd faced a different kind of process. The Little Rock Police Department opened an investigation into whether he violated policy. He was not placed on leave while it ran. He kept working.
Consider the asymmetry the record documents. For the civilian: arrest, three charges, the criminal courts. For the officer: an internal question about policy, examined by his own employer, with no interruption to his duties. One of these processes has teeth by design. The other is a department asking itself whether its own rules were followed, about its own employee, after its own release of the footage.
As of the reporting, the ledger reads this way: a one-year-old Labrador is dead; the man who called 911 faces three criminal charges; and the officer who fired remains on duty while his department decides whether any policy was broken. No discipline has been reported. Whatever the policy review concludes, it is the department grading itself — the only process on record with real consequences attached was aimed at the dog's owner.