A police officer shot Leon Rosby’s Rottweiler, Max, four times at point-blank range, after provoking the dog as if to get the animal to respond so that it could be fired upon.
It was last Sunday, June 30th, and Leon Rosby was video-blogging the actions of Hawthorne, California police officers, when they seemed to take offense to his making a visual record of their work.
Leon Rosby appeared to have some verbal exchange with them while using his cell phone as a camera, then when he saw the police officers coming, put his dog in his car, only (because it was hot), the windows were rolled down.
Rosby went to the cops and willingly gave himself up to be arrested. But the antagonistic actions of the police toward his owner, was all the Rottweiler needed to jump out of the car, and head toward the group of officers to rescue Mr. Rosby.
One officer, for some reason (and this is on video) put his hand out toward the already angry dog, causing the dog to react with anger. Then, after an exchange of barks and voices, the dog backed off – presumably Mr. Rosby said the right words. But all that was negated when the obviously-three-bricks-shy-of-a-load peace officer went to push his hand at the dog again.
Yes, again.
The Rottweiler reacted with predictable anger, and lunged up toward the officer, who responded with a direct, point-blank, gun shot. But he didn’t stop there – the officer became trigger happy and fired four more shots as it was obvious the poor dog was already disabled by the first gun shot.
It was very terrible. Awful. God-awful, ugly.
And it was avoidable.
The Hawthorne, California Police Officers Arrest Of Leon Rosby Was Illegal
The Hawthorne, California police officers acted outside their rights in arresting Mr. Leon Rosby for video-blogging them. Mr. Rosby was acting within his First Amendment rights in making a video of the actions of the cops. His videos are protected by a case called Glik v. Cunniffe 655 F.3d 78 (2011) U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Boston.
The holding in that case was that a bystander has the right to videotape a public official in a public place, which is what Leon Rosby was doing in standing on the sidewalk, outdoors, filming the police officers.
An argument can also be made that Leon Rosby’s Fourth Amendment rights, guaranteeing against false arrest, were violated.
Police Officers Lied About Leon Rosby
According to the ABC 7 News from Hawthorne, California, the police officers claim that they were involved in an armed robbery stand-off, but Rosby was blaring his music loud and distracting them by being close to them. That’s a lie. The audio version of the video does not have loud music coming from his car, and he was a good 100 feet away from them, but using his cell phone camera – and he wasn’t the only one filming.
The police made up a story to cover up their actions.
Stay tuned.