Austin Police Officer Shoots and Kills Man’s Dog While Responding to Wrong Address

Michael Paxton of Austin, Texas lost his best friend because a trigger happy cop decided to shoot first and ask questions later.  The police officer was responding to a domestic disturbance call, and ended up at the WRONG address.

On Saturday, April 14th at about 4:45 pm, Michael Paxton was in his backyard playing Frisbee with his dog, and best friend, Cisco.  Paxton decided to walk to his front yard to grab something out of his truck.  When he entered his driveway, he was quickly confronted by an Austin Police officer pointing a gun at him yelling at him to put his hands up. Paxton told ABC News.com,

He had a Taser. He had pepper spray. I don’t understand why, in broad daylight, he pulled a gun on me. I wasn’t running. I wasn’t hiding. I was just saying, ‘I live here.’ I was panicking. I was afraid for my life.”

While Paxton was being held at gunpoint, Cisco came from the backyard and began barking at the officer. Paxton said he told the officer,

‘Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot my dog. He won’t bite you.’

Before Paxton could say or do anything else, officer Griffin fired one shot into Cisco’s chest, point blank, killing him. Because he was being held at gunpoint, Paxton was unable to stop or restrain his dog. Paxton said that it all happened in under 30 seconds and that there was no attack on the officer other than barking and challenging him.

Paxton was able to shoot a short :15 second video of the officer’s response after shooting Cisco. The officer shrugs his shoulders – which can be interpreted as either “I’m sorry” or “I don’t care.” Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Officer Griffin’s supervisor, Cpl. Anthony Hipolito, told ABCNews.com that the dog was barking and attacking the officer and that the officer “was in retreat” and asked Paxton to grab his dog. Of course, Paxton was unable to do so because he had a gun pointed at his face!

Perhaps the APD’s version of how things went down is a little embellished.  If you listen to the dash-cam below, it sounds more like the officer fired with first sight of the dog – you can hear Cisco get shot about 5 seconds after Griffin told Paxton to put his hands up.

Immediately after hearing about what happened, Paxton’s friends created a Facebook Page called “Justice for Cisco.” The page now has almost 46,000 supporters.

Creators of the Justice for Cisco Facebook page have said,

…we do not want this to turn into a vigilante cop hunt… we are not against law enforcement as a whole, and want to find a way to promote awareness of these types of occurrences and do what we can moving forward to help prevent them from happening again. We can do this by writing our politicians, our city council members, attending City meetings, and holding PEACEFUL demonstrations.

If the officer had responded to the situation instead of reacting, maybe things would have turned out a little different.

Watch and listen to the raw dash-cam footage of an Austin Police Officer shooting Michael Paxton’s dog Cisco:

Watch video of Michael Paxton recounting the shooting of his dog:

[ABC News, Facebook]