Posted on 06/07/2011 5:51:12 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- New Castle police are conducting an internal investigation to determine how the department's K-9 officer died.
The dog, named Chico, died suddenly Saturday. Sources said the dog was left in a police cruiser on Saturday afternoon.
Chico was a 6-year-old , brindle-colored Dutch shepherd that joined the city's K-9 unit in December 2009.
Channel 11's Amy Marcinkiewicz reported that Chico's handler left him in the car with the air conditioning running, which is proper protocol.
Sources close to the investigation told Marcinkiewicz that the air conditioning unit stopped working and an emergency sensor device on the police cruiser did not kick in.
When the car reached a certain temperature, the sensor should have automatically rolled down the windows, activated a fan and the sirens and horn should have gone off, reported Marcinkiewicz.
(Excerpt) Read more at wpxi.com ...
So, Officer Friendly couldn’t be bothered to check every 15 minutes or so just to make sure the damn thing was still running. Some cops are really stupid.
What do they mean, “conduct an investigation”?
Huh? Sounds like they know what happened. Just a way to get overtime I guess.
This is so sad. I can’t imagine being in a hot car and essentially burning up internally. Why did this officer leave the dog for two whole hours? I think that question should definitely be answered.
Heartbreaking.
The manufacture of the safety shut off should be held responsible.
Why is my tax money being used to equip a police cruiser with anti-idiot devices?!
Both cases seem to rely solely on the officers having told the truth that they left the vehicle running. The first cites an anonymous source close to the investigation and the other quotes someone’s “understanding.” Many times, cops are assumed to tell the truth simply because they are cops.
Every year we read of a few cases of parents leaving their children to die in hot cars, but guess what, there were 49 of them just last year.
http://ggweather.com/heat/hyperthermia2010.htm
You’d think the media would want to prominently report on each one like they did military deaths only under Bush to stop the tragedies....
Maybe because they do not know how to hire non-idiots.
Well, when we substitute a machine that ‘thinks’ for humans who do, this sort of thing is the inevitable result.
stupid stupid cop!!!!!!
to leave an animal in a running car without checking on him...I cannot even COMPREHEND doing that to a pet
There are devices we install for just these occurences. When the car’s interior gets to a preset temperature the windows roll down and there is (in some cases) a forced air fan that comes on and cools the interior enough for the dog to survive.
Additonally, there are outputs to connect to alerting devices, (pagers, cell phones, car horn)to alert the handler that there is a problem. Net result; a happier outcome than these stories.
If your department cannot afford such devices, you cannot afford to risk the life of a dog. Especially one that is your partner and could and would take a bullet for you.
I think devices such as this should be required in any vehicle that transports children under the age of 10. Every year we will hear about a child left in a van or bus that has died from the heat.
Hey, it’s 2011. Technology can be nice.
JMHO
Wow there are some stupid people on this thread. The officer had no indication that the air conditioning on the vehicle would stop working and on top of that, the fail-safes in the vehicle designed to protect the dog would also stop working.
A K9 officer still has a job to perform, and in many cases, that means doing police work without the dog. Thus, the safety devices on the car are designed to allow the officer to safely leave the dog in the vehicle.
No, an officer can’t just “come back every 15 minutes” to check on the dog. Nor can the officer have the dog tag along with him everywhere he goes.
Like all things, sometimes accidents happen. Technology fails. If this wasn’t a police officer, the mouth breathers on this thread wouldn’t even utter a peep. It just so happens that police officers have become the easy way for people to lash out at the ‘gubmit.’ Funny thing, the attack on the police that we are seeing now, is straight out of the leftist/communist playbook from the 1960s onward.
Amazing at all far we have slipped.
There was such an alarm. It failed.
In case you’re interested, there is an update on the story here:
http://www.wtae.com/news/28182173/detail.html
The handler has been suspended. Preliminary investigation seems to indicate that he may not have activated the emergency sensor prior to leaving the dog in the car (for almost 4 hours). Human officer was on extra duty, which would by protocol require him to leave the dog at home in the kennel.
Thanks for the update. Sad deal all the way around.
And the car is set up to automatically turn off the A/C after 2 hours.
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