*Miss Collins, I hope I can speak for you? ‘No, muthaf**ker! I’m NOT fine!!!’ That’s what I’d like to say to the officer whose K-9 walked up on 52-year-old Desiree Collins of St. Paul, Minnesota — who happened to be near a trash bin when his K-9 proceeded to maul her. Just because…
The dog was being walked on an exceptionally long leash; in the presence of at least three officers who witnessed the attack — which was captured on their body cam.
As Miss Collins screamed through her pain, with the dog still biting into her arm, one officer can be heard saying, “You’re fine. You’re fine.”
“What did I do to him?” the frightened woman asked after the dog released its vicious bite and she was helped up by two officers.
“Nothing. It’s not your fault,” said one officer as another quipped, “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
While it may be tempting to see this as Miss Collins being the victim of a race move, as some reports seem to infer when speaking of how it was handled, if you have any sense about animal behavior, you too may agree with the “wrong place, wrong time” remark.
As I do.
But even with that, there are two issues I have with the handling of the incident:
One, why in the hell was a police dog on such a long leash? No aggressive animal should have such freedom. I am the owner of two big dogs and whenever I take them out, even their shorter leashes are held close in the event an unsuspecting person or animal appears.
Secondly, the officer that said, “You’re fine.” I understand this was said more as a spontaneous nervous twitch kind of response but dammit, it was the wrong damn thing to say.
“Ma’am, I know you’re in pain, but please try to stay calm so you won’t further agitate the dog,” would have been more compassionate. Of course nothing can be done about it now, but that was the absolute worst choice of words to be caught on camera.
And unfortunately, the worse thing you can do as the victim in this situation is resist the natural urge to pull away. I actually think, all things considered, Miss Collins handled the situation quite well.
Also, it may look like the officer working with the dog was doing so nonchalantly, but he couldn’t just yank the dog off of her. In order to avoid even more pain and damage to Miss Collins, he had to find a way to carefully pry the animal’s teeth from her arm.
A NewsOne article reports…
According to The Washington Post, this ?professionally trained police dog? went wild because the officer had the animal on a long leash and he broke free. St. Paul police apologized to Desiree in a brief statement, ?What happened to Ms. Collins was a terrible accident that should not have occurred. I am sorry it happened and that she was injured. As a department, we wish we could go back and do things differently. Unfortunately, we can?t. What we can do is apologize and take responsibility.?
Collins’ attorney, Andrew Noel told Star Tribune, ?What you have here is a completely innocent person taking out their garbage ? and a K-9 simply wasn?t controlled. It should never have happened.? Desiree suffered multiple injuries and has now filed a federal lawsuit.
As she should. The incident happened because of carelessness. Period.
Source: NewsOne
Watch the heartbreaking video below. Please be well, Miss Collins.
