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(WOIO) - The Westlake police department needs to conduct a thorough, unbiased investigation of what went wrong last Saturday when one of their officers shot a family pet - an eight-year old Labrador named Callaway. And, at the very least, the outcome of that investigation should be a change in protocol for how Westlake cops, and perhaps other police agencies, handle animal-related situations.
The incident in question took place Saturday afternoon when an officer responded to a burglar alarm going off at the home of a Westlake dentist who was in church at the time. The officer said the dog - one of two in the owner's back yard - charged him and that he had no choice but to shoot.
Look, cops face danger and threats and stress on a daily basis and we don't want to minimize that, but a barking dog doesn't always mean a vicious dog and it seems to us that the officer in question here should have been trained to consider some other recourse in this situation short of a bullet in the dog's head.
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