CHP Defends Killing Loose Dog on Freeway

The California Highway Patrol does not hate dogs.

“We are not bad people,” Chief Edward Gomez, commander of the CHP’s Southern Division, said Thursday. “Most of the officers have pets. . . . I think animals are things people really support, and we do too.”

Gomez’s unusual defense of his troops--more often criticized for handing out speeding tickets than for cruelty to animals--was in response to news reports of a July 5 incident in which CHP officers intentionally ran over a dog that was tying up rush hour traffic on the Harbor Freeway.

News of the incident, said Gomez, prompted “hundreds” of calls from upset citizens who read or heard Thursday that a supervising sergeant told officers on the scene to “run it over and kill it” if the dog was liable to cause an accident.

In an attempt to forestall a full-fledged public relations disaster, Gomez held a news conference Thursday afternoon at the Southern Division’s Glendale headquarters and explained to a bevy of reporters that his officers had not wanted to kill the dog, but believed that they had no other choice.

“We have a policy of trying everything possible . . . to remove animals as humanely as possible,” Gomez said. “But there are occasions when human life might be in jeopardy. . . . In that particular case, the decision was made to try to disable the dog and try to take it off.”

About a dozen motorists called the CHP about 6 p.m. on July 5 to report a black dog on the Harbor Freeway near 54th Street, “jumping back and forth between lanes,” Gomez said. There is no shoulder on that section of freeway and no center divider, the chief said, so “there was a lot of concern over the potential of an accident and for someone getting hurt.”

At 6:28, according to CHP logs, an officer radioed in that he had spotted the dog--a black German shepherd mix female--running south in the northbound lanes near Vernon Avenue.

Four officers tried to capture the dog using a dog snare--a 4-foot-long pole with a rope loop attached at the end--but had no luck.

About 6:49, with traffic stopped, at least one of the officers got in a patrol car and ran the dog over. The dog was wrapped in a blanket and rushed to the South-Central animal shelter on 11th Avenue. The critically injured animal was put to death at 7:20.

That put the matter to rest, so to speak, until news of the incident broke--including an incorrect version that had the officers leaving the dog for dead alongside the freeway, prompting the public outcry and Gomez’s clarification of the CHP’s policy on animals.

“We’ve herded everything from elephants to cats off the freeways,” Gomez said. “We had four officers on one of the busiest freeways in the world (trying) to do everything we possibly could to humanely deal with this animal, and most of the time we can do that. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.”