Pet Threat

• Author: Arin Greenwood
• Pages: 16-18

The Docket

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS / KEVIN.DAVIS@AMERICANBAR.ORG

Pet Threat

Courts are awarding signifi cant damages to families whose dogs

are killed by police

By Arin Greenwood

On Feb. 1, 2014, a Maryland police

o cer inve stigating a robbery shot and

killed a family ’s beloved dog.

O c er Rodney Price, who’d been on

the force for a year, was in the water front

neighborhood of the Baltimore suburb

of Glen Burnie searching for w itnesses.

Price encountered Vern, the Reeves fa mily’s 4-year-old

Chesapeake Bay retr iever, in the yard af ter knocking on

the front door. He shot Vern twice after the dog went at

him, he claimed.

Timothy Reeves, one of the fami ly’s adult children,

and his father, Michael, were in the basement ha nging

a dart board. They h adn’t heard Price knocking or the

gunshots. Reeves’ t hen-girlfriend saw Price in the yard

and told Reeves he had bett er come upstairs.

Reeves ran out to fi nd Vern “bleeding out and gasping,”

he says. Michael followed his son outside. When he saw

Vern, he put his fi ngers into the bullet wounds, trying to

stop the bleeding. Vern died a short time later.

According to the Baltim ore Sun, Price said at the time

that Vern had “confronted and attac ked” him, provoking

the shooting. “I unloaded on your dog. Your dog attacked

me, and I killed it,” Price rep ortedly told the family.

The Reeves family fi led suit agai nst Anne Arundel

County and Price. More tha n three years later, in May

2017, a jury awarded Michael Reeves, Vern’s primary

owner, $1.26 million, the largest civ il judgment in U.S.

history for a pet’s death at the ha nds of police.

However, the court later reduced the judgment to

$207,500 under a Maryland statute t hat limits local

governments’ liability. “This i s still one of the highest

awards ever for the shooting of a fami ly pet by police,”

says Cary Hans el, a Baltimore lawyer who represented

the Reeves family.

Hansel, anima l advocates and the family say they

SHUTTERSTOCK

National

Pulse

16 || ABA JOURNAL APRIL 2018