Police in Houston are facing considerable ire from the public and from the mayor amid allegations that an officer ordered a man to abandon his elderly, blind dog during a traffic stop, leading to that dog getting hit and killed by a car.
TV station ABC13 reports that Guero, an elderly chihuahua owned by Josie Garcia and her husband, was hit by a car after an officer pulled them over and ordered them to leave the dog by the side of the road unattended.
And now, even Houston's mayor is super pissed about the situation and how it ended for Guero.
Garcia told local media that her husband gave a friend a ride home in their SUV on July 14 when an officer pulled them over for failing to signal. Guero was in the car too. The officer searched the car and found some PCP on the passenger, so he took both men into custody. (The charges against Garcia's husband were later dropped.)
But Garcia says the officer refused to let her husband call someone to pick up Guero, or even drop him off at a nearby animal shelter. The officer reportedly said it "wasn't his problem."
Guero, who was 14, met with a sad fate, the TV station reports:
Three days later, after someone responded to a 'lost' sign Garcia has left around Fifth Ward, she was told where she could find Guero. She was also told he didn't make it. She found him on a shoulder of the Eastex Freeway. The dog, which was nearly blind from cataracts and old age, had been hit and killed.
So Garcia filed a complaint against the officer, prompting an investigation the Houston Press says could take six months to complete. But Garcia got an immediate answer from Mayor Annise Parker at a city council session:
"Let me give you a public apology right now on behalf of the city of Houston," Parker told Garcia. "I don't know what airhead — there's another word in my mind but I'm not going to say it — would throw, you wouldn't put a kid on the side of the road. You shouldn't put someone's pet on the side of the road."
Not a good look, Houston police.
Hat tip to Clever Username