Video shows the moments a police officer shot and killed a pet dog in a Miami park.
NBC6 Investigates exclusively obtained the video from police body worn cameras showing the shooting and the moments leading up to it.
Nicole Iyescas and her daughter Esmeralda previously spoke with NBC6 after they say an officer with Miami Police shot and killed their one-year-old dog Miso in Sewell Park last April.
“A lack of experience with animals that unfortunately led to this horrific event,” Nicole said, after watching the video. She blames a lack of police training for what happened to her dog.
“This did not have to happen,” she added.
A police report says officers went to the park on South River drive for a dog bite complaint, after a man reported Miso bit him. A photo from Miami-Dade Animal Services shows a wound on the man’s upper arm.
Nicole says the man walked close to the bench where she was sitting, she lost her grip on Miso’s leash and the man fell.
Video shows officers talking to the man as Nicole and Miso, on a leash, wait several feet away. Nicole says what happened next, set off her already nervous dog.
Video shows one officer walk up to Nicole and Miso, who was sitting behind her. Miso suddenly starts barking and jumps toward the officer, still on the leash.
At that point, the officer kicks the dog in the face and takes a step backward.
Video shows Nicole appears to lose balance and her grip on the leash. The dog runs toward the officer who falls to the ground as another officer fires one shot and hits Miso. The entire encounter lasted six seconds.
Miso lies bleeding in the grass for several minutes before dying.
“You can see the dog suffering,” Nicole said.
She says if the officer had backed up when Miso started barking, instead of kicking him, this wouldn’t have happened.
“He kicked the dog so hard that I lost my balance and at this time I lost the leash,” she said.
When asked if she felt the officer was in danger when he fell to the ground, Nicole said she felt her dog was just trying to escape.
Miami Police tell NBC6 Investigates their internal affairs unit found the officers followed policy and departmental orders.
Nicole disagrees and says the shooting could have put others at risk.
“It’s dangerous situation in the public park,” she said.
The team at Broward Animal Care has animal control officers who respond to these calls, often alongside police, but were not involved in this incident.
“When you’re scared or nervous, your pets tend to be more protective,” according to field supervisor Philip Goen, “If you have an escalated situation, that’s what we would call a trigger for an animal.”
That’s why behavior and training manager Jamie Devereaux says it’s always best to give a dog space when possible.
“If a dog is perceiving you as a threat, any direct eye contact like this, any forward posture towards the dog, those are all things that the dog is probably going to interpret the wrong way,” Devereaux explained.
But they point out that staying back is not always an option for officers, whether animal control or police, whose priority is public safety.
“They don’t have that luxury,” Goen said, “Their job is to engage…The first thing that they’re going to try and do is trying to de-escalate that animal.”
“There was no imminent danger,” Nicole said.
She says the video shows her dog was calm and, on a leash, when police arrived at the park that day.
“That could be avoided,” she said, “They could just wait for the animal control. Miso would be alive.”
Animal control officials tell NBC 6 they do recommend police contact them on animal-related calls, but animal services in both counties say their staff is limited with between 14-16 officers split over varying shifts to cover entire counties and response times can be long.
Miami Police did not respond to a request to speak to the officers involved in the incident.
NBC6 also requested a copy of the internal affairs report as well as any Miami Police use of force policy involving animals but has not yet received a response to those requests.
