A group of roommates in Maryland sued police for $16 million after officers allegedly entered their apartment without a warrant and shot and paralyzed their dog, The Washington Post reported this week.
The animal was later euthanized, the Post reported, with roommates Erica Umana, Erika Erazo Sanchez, Dayri Amaya Benitez and Brandon Cuevas now pursuing Prince George's County Police Department over the incident. County officials declined comment to the Post on pending litigation.
In an outcry over the news, claims appeared on social media alleging that police across the U.S. were killing up to 30 dogs per day, equating to more than 10,000 per year.
The Claim
A post on X, formerly Twitter, by user @davenewworld, posted on November 28, 2023, claimed: "The DOJ estimates that American police kill 25-30 dogs per day. Why are cops killing so many dogs? How can anyone justify this?"
The Facts
The word "puppycide" was coined in the aughts to label claims of police killing dogs following a wave of online news reports.
The 25-30 figure appears to have come from an interview given by Laurel Matthews of the Department of Justice's Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office, who reportedly gave the statistic to Police Magazine in 2014 as the number of dogs killed by police each day. That would mean between 9,125 and 10,950 dogs killed each year. The Police Magazine article now available online, though, does not contain the figure.
In any case, Matthews' figure was only an estimate and was not supplemented by verifiable evidence. Newsweek has contacted the DoJ's COPS office via email for comment.
Official data on dogs being killed by police is limited. No legislation requires the recording or reporting of animal deaths. Even if all police departments recorded these deaths, without a standardized method for doing so, the data across forces would be difficult to synchronize.
Some journalists have been able to track down reports from police departments that have recorded shooting incidences, if not killings, at least on some occasions.
A 2020 article by Slate reported that between 2010 and 2016, Los Angeles Police Department officers were involved in 417 shootings, with dogs shot in more than a quarter of cases. While useful, the data cannot be easily extrapolated to other regions and counties across the U.S. to create a reliable estimate.
In Rochester, New York, 42 dogs were shot by police, with 22 killed, between 2015 and 2022, according to firearm discharge reports obtained by WXXI News under a Freedom of Information law request.
Although the overall 25-30 figure may not necessarily be wrong, a lack of standardized reporting that would corroborate it simply is not available.
The Ruling
Unverified.
The 25-30 figure likely comes from an estimate given by a Department of Justice official in 2014. No other evidence was provided to support it.
Data beyond this claim is limited or unavailable. There is no national U.S. database on the number of animals shot and/or killed by police. While some police departments have produced reports that mention animal shootings, it's unclear how reliably this is reported either.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
