Requiem for a Dog : Police, Neighbors Heartbroken as Canine Meets a Tragic End

This is the saga of a mongrel named Skippy. May she rest in peace.

In her life, Skippy won the hearts and minds of some of L.A.’s toughest men and women in blue. Her death set off a media stampede Thursday, causing reporters, photographers and camera operators to descend on the 77th Street police station in an effort to get to the bottom of her unfortunate demise.

“Skippy had endeared (herself) to the hearts of all those at the station,” Capt. Patrick Froehle of the 77th Street Area station told reporters outside the brick police station. “Through an unfortunate chain of events that was no one’s fault, the dog was taken and put to sleep.”

Skippy’s story began when she and her puppy strayed into the 77th Street parking lot about five months ago, Froehle said. Although the officers’ first impulse was to send the dogs away, the hardened cops were soon won over by the canines’ devotion and irrepressible friendliness. Officers adopted the dogs, who roamed freely in the station’s fenced lot.

The story ended Wednesday, when Skippy was put to death by animal control officers after a neighborhood woman complained that the dog had tried to attack her, police said.

Earlier in the day, the woman had called the city’s Animal Regulation Department to complain that Skippy had escaped from the fenced lot and tried to bite her, said Lt. Robert Pena, an animal regulation spokesman. The woman was unharmed.

Animal control officers--who had received three complaints about a “vicious brown dog” in the neighborhood during the previous week--went to the station to investigate, Pena said, “and none of the (police) wanted to claim custody or responsibility for the dog.” When asked why police did not defend Skippy, Froehle was at a loss for words. And then there was the question of whether Skippy had a license or was living the life of an outlaw dog. Froehle declined to comment.

Animal regulation officers took Skippy away and put her to death by injection four hours later because her runny eyes led them to believe she had distemper. Animal Regulation regularly impounds healthy dogs for seven days, but sick dogs can be immediately killed, Pena said.

Police officers and neighborhood residents said they had no idea that Skippy might be sick.

“I am crushed,” said Alberta Gentilly, a 30-year resident of the modest South-Central Los Angeles community of tract homes and duplexes. “That dog was healthy and friendly and just what we needed in the neighborhood.”

Police were incredulous Thursday at the media’s response to Skippy’s death. No less than eight television and radio stations dispatched reporters to the 77th Street station over the course of the morning. One reporter asked Froehle earnestly: “What’s going to be the future of Skippy’s puppy?”

At a morning barbecue, officers ate hamburgers in the 77th Street lot beside a large makeshift wooden cross on which someone had scrawled: “Skippy--RIP” and “Gassed Without Due Process.”

Saddened officers reminisced about the dog, fondly referring to her as a mutt and saying she looked something like a German shepherd. Although they said Skippy usually was not allowed into the station, a chair in the lobby was covered with brown hair and had been clearly marked with a sign reading “Skippy’s chair.”

Officers had set aside a hamburger for Skippy’s puppy, but the unnamed dog was nowhere in sight. Police speculated that he had run under a trailer to hide from television reporters and media vans.