The Vacaville Police Department has responded to a video captured this week that shows a police officer punching a dog.
“Yesterday evening a video surfaced of an interaction between one of our officers and his canine partner during training. We understand how disturbing the video appears to many who view it and the range of emotions it creates. What the video doesn’t show is the moments prior, when the canine became aggressive towards his handler. We want to assure the public this incident is being evaluated in its entirety and will be investigated appropriately.
Our canine program is, and always has been an incredibly vital and important part of our policing. Entrusted with a difficult job, we rely on them to respond with precise skill leaving very little room for misjudgments. When we stray from this expectation, we are left vulnerable to an animal making decisions that could impact our communities safety. This underscored the importance of training and the value of a police dog responding appropriately to his handler in a given situation.Although our canines appear to be pets, just like the ones we all have at home; they are quite different in many ways. If left unguided by a handler, the decisions they make could lead to the injury of the dog, an officer or an innocent community member. All training programs are not alike and need to be tailored to the needs of the specific dog and handler. This is generally achieved by a careful balance of physical discipline and reward based training. As with any training program, we are constantly evaluating our policies and procedures for needed improvement. We are still collecting all the information as it pertains to this incident for the purposes of that evaluation.We want to assure our community that our canine program is one of the most loved in our department. Our four legged partners are far more than just a tool, they are a member of our PD family. For the many thousands of people we have met at demonstrations, school functions, church gatherings and other events; you have witnessed this love and devotion, and the incredible bond our canine teams share.
“I’m sure he saw me,” the man, Roberto Palomino, said in a Facebook post. “He stopped beating the dog when he saw me.”
Palomino said he was afraid to confront the officer over the incident.
“Screaming at an armed Vacaville police officer is something I wouldn’t suggest to [anyone],” Palomino said in response to a comment left on his page.
Content Warning: Animal Abuse
On Tuesday, a Vacaville police department spokesperson told a local television news reporter that the officer seen in the video was “correcting” the dog, who was training to be a police K-9. The agency said the dog lunged at the officer and nearly bit him during their training session.
Palomino said he is not convinced by their explanation.
“It was more than clear this is not training,” he wrote in an update on Facebook.
Excerpts Taken & Modified from Solano News Update, Matthew Keys 12.29.20
In light of this casual abuse witnessed of Vacaville Police Department, we think it’s important to analyze three main characteristics of this incident.
- The normalization of predatory abuse by law enforcement.
- The colonist integration of animals into the line of duty.
- The public outcry of animal abuse over racial abuse.
Without putting this incident into context, our community is likely to view this incident as an embarrassing oversight, an isolated incident, or the results of poor training. We hope to emphasize how this isn’t the case, this isn’t a mistake, and this isn’t an accident; For VVPD, this is business as usual. The difference is the publics ability to witness it.
The Normalization of Predatory Abuse by Law Enforcement.
When analyzing the statement released by VVPD through their Facebook post, we can immediately extrapolate a culture of casual abuse written between the lines of the text. This can be through their pandering dismissal of the incident, “We understand how disturbing the video appears,” where they immediately begin to reframe the incident by pandering to those who witnessed it. They want you to doubt what you’ve bared witness to.
Secondly and just as quick, they begin to “other” the animal in the video as nothing more than a tool. “Although our canines appear to be pets, just like the ones we all have at home; they are quite different in many ways.” By othering the victims of police abuse, law enforcement attempts to minimize their abuse as a necessary byproduct of their aid.
“All training programs are not alike and need to be tailored to the needs of the specific dog and handler.” The Vacaville Police Department spokesperson even referred to this type of “tailored training” as “correcting (the dog)“. They are in admittance that fist-fighting a restrained animal is part of their protocol.
Finally they reel it all in with a loving pathos. “Our four legged partners are far more than just a tool, they are a member of our PD family.” As they admit that dogs are a tool, in the same breath, they defend them as part of their family. Why would they abuse someone they saw as family? We can’t explain the motivation, but with a culture of abuse & a staggering 40% of law enforcement reported for domestically abusing their spouse & kids, we can see how frequent they get away with abusing defenseless targets in plain sight.
The Colonist Integration of Animals into the Line of Duty.
The use of animals as tools in colonization is as old as colonization itself. In most indiginous/aboriginal cultures, there is a recognized symbiotic relationship between animals and humans. Although there is hunting, eating and feasting, there is typically an emphasis on respect of land, experience of life, and an ecological focus to maintain those systems in balance.
The crude use of animals today by our colonist government shows the opposite of a symbiotic relationship; the cats brought by Westerners that have ravaged the bird population, the grass lawns of centuries ago wasting away our waters, and the use of animals in the line of duty.
According to LawEnforcementMuseum.Org,
“The earliest K-9 training facility started in Ghent, Belgium, in 1899, which became widely recognized as the leader in canine training, utilizing Belgian sheepdogs and wolfhounds. As a result, word spread and in 1907, Brigadier General Theodore A. Bingham, the New York (NY) Police Commissioner, sent Inspector George R. Wakefield to study Ghent’s training program. Wakefield returned to the states with five Belgian sheepdogs for operation and breeding purposes. This would become the first canine training program implemented in the United States”
Although this would be the start, it wouldn’t be the finish. At the foundation of this training, dogs were trained to attack anyone who isn’t in uniform by use of torture. Similar to law enforcement, they were taught to see anyone not in uniform as an enemy.
“They were trained not only to obey law enforcement in general but to see anyone not in a police uniform as hostile. During training, men would walk through the kennels in plain clothes and tease the dogs for several days or even weeks until the dogs showed extreme aggressiveness towards anyone not wearing a uniform.”
Police are quick to justify using dogs in the line of duty, such as drug hounds in the immoral “War on Drugs”, the bomb squad to substitute human-risk, and during live pursuit of uncompliant “criminals”.
However, the use of police dogs in this manner is almost never the case, as police dogs are routinely taught how to give a false drug positive, bomb squads are replaced by robots, and the “criminals” law enforcement pursue become victims of police brutality as officers use dog teeth in substitute of striking a victim with their own hands.
So far we’ve only centered around the use of dogs in policing; Not to include the abuse of horses by law enforcement, both in training & implementation, such as deploying them as weapons of crowd control at political demos.
The deeper you dig, the more you find this historical use and abuse of animals as a tool and shield of the colonist government to subjugate those they deem as “other”, as in the civil rights era as it is today. We must demand an end to animal abuse “in the line of duty” which has never been necessary and has been used solely to victimize the members of the community they pretend to protect and serve.
The Public Outcry of Animal Abuse Over Racial Abuse.
In our community, as it is in every community, we stand against animal abuse when it rears its ugly head. Nothing unifies a community greater than standing against the atrocities of animal abusers. This is surprisingly the same when the abuser is Vacaville Police Department.
No matter where news spreads of VVPD, folks of varying political tendency and backgrounds can agree: What the officer did was wrong. A comment by Rachel Renee Wilson posted to VVPD’s Facebook Post reads:
“As someone who’s married to a Master K9 Trainer who has trained many police and military dogs, there is no excuse for what was on that video. This was a very poorly executed response.
You do not meet aggression with punching a dog in the face over and over, ever. My husbands number one rule is to never lay hands on a dog. This is how dogs get DESTROYED and returned to the trainers/breeders completely broken (which by the way, all the vendors are tired of seeing)
Do better, fire this man and hire someone legitimate to train. Good lord. We have 3 retired canines in our home, none of them have ever been hit and I guarantee they work just as well as your dogs and some of them even worked at neighboring precincts.
It’s pretty sad that myself, a young woman, can handle police and military dogs without using abusive tactics…. but your grown officer can’t.”
Varying degrees of others will say the same thing and demand accountability of that officer. And do you know what the incredible part is? Within 24 hours, Vacaville Police Department dignified a response to the incident. So I propose this question: If our community can create a unified front over law enforcement abusing animals, why can’t we create a unified front over law enforcement killing Black people?
The response is radically different to a video of law enforcement brutalizing a defenseless human victim, especially when the victim is Black. When a police officer is seen brutalizing a person on video, thousands run to the comments section to uncritically defend the police officer for their actions. In Solano County, we aren’t seeing that same response when its an officer brutalizing a dog. To answer frankly, Solano cares more about pets lives than they do Black lives.
If we could organize our community in a way to love our neighbors as much as we love our pets, as part of our community, we might stand a chance at seeing actual justice in our injustice system. If we defend Black life as much as we defend canine abuse in law enforcement, then we might actually have a chance to hold police officers accountable for abuse and murder, like will likely happen to the officer in the video today.
In conclusion, I hope our community takes time to reflect on this incident and the facts around it going into 2021. Those of you in Fairfield might recognize this image that came in the mail from the Fairfield Police Officers Association below.
Going forward, consider if you want to continue funding animal abusers like the officers in your local police department. Police departments are historically racist, right-wing, reactionary institutions with overlap into white supremacist groups. If you’re thinking with your dollar, take the money you would spend here and throw it to one of the many wonderful organizations doing mutual aid work in your community.
Do you have any information about abuse from Vacaville Police Department? Do you know about activity like this in Solano County? Give us an email at vvrw@protonmail.com and follow us on social media for more updates and alerts.
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Vacaville Right Watch
12.30.2020