It was about four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon at the Sunland Park Recreation Center, a public park on Foothill Boulevard in the northeast corner of Los Angeles. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies had spotted a woman they were seeking on a felony grand theft charge. She ran into the park, according to the Sheriff's Department, and deputies caught up with her and took her into custody.
Her dog, a pit bull, was there too. What happened next is known almost entirely through the department's own account.
The Sheriff's Department said the dog lunged at the deputies and tried to bite them while they were arresting the woman. A deputy used a Taser on the dog, the department said, and the dog did not stop. A deputy then fired. The dog was struck by gunfire and taken to a local veterinary hospital for treatment. Neither CBS Los Angeles nor NBC Los Angeles reported the dog's name, age, or condition after it arrived at the hospital; authorities did not disclose whether it survived.
The Los Angeles Police and Fire Departments responded to assist. It was unclear whether any deputies were hurt. Video from NBC's NewsChopper4 showed at least one person being taken to a hospital, but the station reported that the person's connection to the incident was unknown. The two outlets differed on the location: CBS placed the shooting in the 8100 block of Foothill Boulevard, NBC in the 8600 block.
The woman who was arrested — the dog's owner — has not been quoted anywhere in the published coverage. Whether she disputes the department's description of her dog's behavior is not on the record. For now, the only version of this shooting that exists in public is the version supplied by the agency that fired the shot.
That agency did not wait for a review to weigh in. In a statement issued the same day, LASD Capt. Ryan Vienna said: "This is an unfortunate incident, and I applaud the deputies for their extraordinary efforts to de-escalate the situation with the animal before resorting to potentially lethal force." He also thanked the Los Angeles police and fire departments for their assistance. The department asked anyone who witnessed the shooting to contact a sheriff's detective.
No discipline has been reported. No finding by any reviewing body has been announced, and none is required to be made public on any particular timetable. No lawsuit has been reported. A captain's public commendation, delivered hours after the shooting and before any completed review, is the only official assessment of the deputies' conduct on the record.
There is no national requirement that police agencies report shootings of dogs at all — not the number, not the circumstances, not the outcome for the animal. Departments that do release information choose what to release and when. In this case that means the public knows a Taser was tried, knows a gun was fired, and does not know whether the dog lived. Both facts about the record here are ordinary. That is the problem with the record.