A Fayetteville police officer was filmed hitting his K-9. Dog behavior experts are calling it animal cruelty. 

A graphic 30-second video showing a Fayetteville police officer and K-9 handler striking his dog and lifting and dragging the K-9 by its collar has drawn outrage and condemnation from some Fayetteville residents. 

A video of the incident was posted on Facebook by a bystander who filmed it June 23 from inside a parked car in the Walgreens parking lot on Village Drive. 

In the video, the officer — who had not been identified — punches the dog three times while holding the K-9’s collar. He then dangles the dog by the collar and drags it, partially suspended in the air with its front legs off the ground, towards his car. The dog attempts to respond with an unsuccessful nip, at which point the officer grabs the dog by the muzzle, closing it shut, and swings it around by the collar, dragging the animal to the car with all four legs in the air. 

The incident occurred after a traffic stop where the K-9 was ordered to sniff the stopped vehicle, the Fayetteville Police Department said in a statement on July 5, following an internal investigation into the interaction. 

In the weeks that followed, FPD “received numerous complaints and comments expressing concerns about the incident,” the department said in the statement about its internal investigation into the incident. The department said the punches were prompted by the K-9 biting the officer on the thigh for “10-12 seconds.”

A similar incident in North Carolina, also documented in a viral video, occurred in Salisbury in 2021, when a police officer slammed his K-9 dog into his cruiser. The officer resigned after a third-party investigation into the incident, but the Rowan County District Attorney ultimately chose not to prosecute the case. 

Animal abuse and cruelty is against the law in North Carolina, and depending on the severity of the case, animal abuse charges range from a Class 1 misdemeanor to a Class H felony. It’s unclear if the unnamed Fayetteville Police Officer in the video has faced disciplinary action or been reassigned from the K-9 unit; the department has so far declined to answer CityView’s questions about it or provide any new information beyond what was in the initial press release. 

The statement said the video posted on social media didn’t depict the entire incident. It says the K-9, after receiving commands from the officer, circled behind him and hit him in the thigh, then refused to release the bite after being given a verbal command to do so.

“K9 Handler while being bitten, had to step over and around the K9 to gain a position of control while attempting to stop the aggression,” the statement said. “After 10-12 seconds of being bitten the Handler strikes the K9 with his fist a total of seven times. K9 releases the bite after the seventh strike and no further strikes were delivered. K9 Handler maintains control of the K9 by the collar elevating it off the ground and away from his body.”

The statement adds that the K9 in question wasn’t injured in the incident, but that the officer was injured, and received treatment.

The police department’s policy manual specifies that K-9s may only be seen by in-house veterinarians except during extreme medical emergencies. 

“K9 handlers, in an EXTREME EMERGENCY ONLY, may take the K9 to the nearest available veterinarian for treatment,” it states. “In such instances, the extent of the illness or injury will immediately be communicated to the department veterinarian.”

The police department declined to answer additional questions from CityView about the incident, including the name of the officer, any disciplinary action that had resulted from it, and whether the dog had been reassigned or was still in service. Nor did the department answer as to whether a Fayetteville police K-9 had ever been removed or reassigned from its handler in the past. 

Walgreens staff declined to comment on the incident that took place in the pharmacy’s parking lot.

What experts and advocates say about it

Experts and advocates have weighed in, including the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which called on the Fayetteville Police Department to immediately remove the K-9 from the officer and reassign the officer to other duties. The animal rights group described the police department’s July 5 statement as “victim-blaming” the police dog to justify the officer’s actions. 

“If the Fayetteville Police Department thinks it’s acceptable to punch a dog in the face even once, let alone seven times, it has no business having dogs and we fear for the human community,” PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch said in a statement shared with CityView. 

Jutta King, an independent dog trainer and behaviorist, spoke to CityView Thursday about the incident while at Naturally Unleashed in Traemoor Village, less than a mile from where the incident took place. King, who has taught classes on pet behavior at Fayetteville Technical Community College, said in her three decades of experience as a dog trainer, including training police dogs in Germany, she’d never witnessed such cruelty by a handler. 

“The dog at that point was just fearing for his life,” King said. “So that dog, in my opinion, is ruined for police work. I don’t know if you can rehab that or rebuild this dog or rebuild trust in the dog, because it really is all about trust between the dog and the handler.”

Even though the police department said the K-9 had “no documented injuries” after the incident, King said she was skeptical of that assessment. She emphasized that, besides causing physical harm to the dog in the moment, responding to a K-9 in that manner irrevocably shifts the trust-based dynamic between dog and man. 

“Think about it: If you use your hand in the negative on your dog — you punch your dog, you hit your dog, or even if you give treats and cookies and then you punch your dog — your dog will never, ever trust your hand,” King said. “Why? Why should the dog trust your hand? Your hand becomes a weapon. A weapon that can never be trusted.”

Colin Henstock, an investigations project manager for PETA’s Cruelty Investigations Department, told CityView his department sees instances of K-9 abuse by police officers across the country on a regular basis, the most common of which is officers leaving K-9s unattended in hot cars. 

“Situations like this are probably a little less common, but we still see them several times a year,” Henstock said of the Fayetteville incident, which he described as a clear example of animal abuse. 

“This isn’t an incident where a man is fighting for his life against a dog,” Hemstock told CityView. “This is a man abusing a dog. Regardless of what happened before the video started filming, he had the dog under control, and there’s no excuse for continuing to yank him and strike him like that.”

Speaking from her experience as a professional dog trainer, King emphasized that dogs cannot be faulted for bad behavior, as animals have no concept of morality. 

“Dogs absolutely don’t understand right from wrong,” she said. “It doesn’t exist in the dog’s mind.”

How are K-9s trained at the Fayetteville Police Department?  

FPD declined CityView’s inquiries about what training the K-9 handler received, what the training of Fayetteville police K-9 handlers entails, how long the officer was paired with the K-9 and why a K-9 team had been requested to respond to the call. 

The police department’s policy manual contains a section devoted to K-9s, but doesn’t detail the types of training K-9s or handlers receive. All police K-9 teams undergo initial training by a Master Trainer, followed by ongoing training led by the K-9 Team Sergeant and self-directed practice, according to the manual. K-9 handlers and their dogs are evaluated quarterly to maintain certification.

“Each handler is responsible for the wellbeing and daily care of the K9 and will be trained to monitor the general condition and health of the K9,” the manual states. 

King said training dogs in a positive manner is the key to preventing acts of canine aggression from happening in the first place, as dogs instinctively react to their circumstances and the treatment they receive. 

“I think most of all the dog bites we have can be prevented,” King said. “It’s preventable simply because of wrong upbringing, harsh training methods [that] create that frustration, anger in dogs. You cannot intimidate your dog into anything, really.” 

Henstock also said that the violence toward police dogs is associated with the dominance and punishment-based training methods that are still widely used by police departments today, despite growing evidence that rewards-based training for dogs is both more effective and humane.  

“Cruel treatment is ineffective,” Henstock said. “It breaks the bond between the canine and the handler. The dog is afraid of the handler, and the handler can become frustrated that the dog isn’t doing what he or she is expected to do. And instead of shifting the training approach to a humane one, a lot of times handlers will be vindictive and violent towards the animal, which results in a spiral and escalates the dog’s fear and anxiety. So the dog suffers, the agency suffers, and the community suffers.”

Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608. To keep CityView Today going and to grow our impact even more, we’re asking our committed readers to consider becoming a member. Click here to join.