Instead, Columbia Master Police Officer David Hurt will be suspended without pay for five days, Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook said at a Thursday press conference. He also will no longer be allowed to handle K9s and will be suspended from the department’s bomb squad.
Hurt was the handler for Turbo, a 2-year-old Labrador retriever trained to detect explosives. Turbo worked for the department for 7 months before his death on July 26, according to South Carolina newspaper The State.
On July 26, Hurt left Turbo in a police vehicle from around 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. while he attended an active-shooter training at a local high school.
Holbrook said at the news conference Hurt had parked the car in the shade and left the vehicle’s air conditioning on.
But for unclear reasons, he deactivated the vehicle’s heat alarm, which sets off a siren and horn if the inside temperature gets too hot. And while he asked someone else to visually check on Turbo around 11:30, he didn’t come back to the vehicle to give the dog a bathroom break.
When Hurt returned to the vehicle at around 3:30, Turbo was foaming at the mouth and clearly in distress. Though he brought Turbo to a vet, it was too late, and the dog ultimately had to be euthanized for organ failure as a result of the heat.
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I have a 2017 Jeep Wrangler(30K), my huskys ride with me everywhere. While eating they are inside full AC blast, however I still check on them every 20 minutes.
That local PD to me was caught on video tape abusing their K9. Local dog recuse organization attempted to get a court order to seize the poor creature, but failed. Hero was cleared of course. They always are there.
Yeah it takes a lot of fighting to push that stuff through, even when it’s just a regular shmuck.. SPCA was all over a case up here where a local drunken psycho piece of crap with no priors killed a 6mo old puppy with blows to the head from the back side of an ax for no particular reason, only got 300 days in jail..probably didn’t even have to serve it all.. and a couple years probation.
So when you think about it, when the nutjobs they recruit for law enforcement are encouraged to exhibit that type of behavior toward all living beings… There won’t be any consequences at all for them to face.
The heat alarm was off…..sorry fucker.
Now I know I can get a heat alarm and I will. I’ve had to leave my dog in the pickup for hours but I’d make a quick dash every half hour or so to check.
Of course a good vehicle will run the tank dry without overheating with the a/c on.
My main worry was having the pickup catch fire. My old Turbo Diesel with R12 would probably have you shivering.
I need to get a heat alarm to work with my phone. The only vehicles I ever knew to catch fire idling were Broncos made in the 80s with some sort of clock that would catch the interior on fire. They cost Ford a lot of money . I knew a woman who left her baby in one for just a couple minutes and when she returned it was burning inside and baby became a vegetable from the smoke. That one cost a few million
“Holbrook said at the news conference Hurt had parked the car in the shade and left the vehicle’s air conditioning on.”
Only a dumb ass with powers of arrest over others would think doing the above would be a good idea.
Morning, Aljer!
Yup. If you or I did the same – and “someone called” – there would be much Hut! Hut! Hutting! – followed by charging. But armed government workers are largely immune from such consequences.
And what kind of climate control systems do their vehicles have? I’ve never operated a vehicle where I could run the AC without running the engine, and idk about down there but up around here there’s signs all over about idling being illegal.
Hi Moose!
Unless it was an electric car, with an electrically driven compressor, the engine had to be on for the AC to be operating. Even if it was, there would be Hut! Hut! Hutting if anyone else did the same thing.
An interesting angle to this story is that the four-legged “hero” didn’t get the usual special protections. If an ordinary person causes the death of a canine “hero,” he can expect to be charged with a felony. But when a two-legged “hero” causes the death of a four legged “hero,” the two-legged “hero” gets a pass.
Yeah even for being above the law, as a K9 that’s supposed to be his “brother”. And that’s what I mean in the other comments, somebody had it out for this puppy. Could’ve just handed him over to a foster home if they didn’t wanna take care of him. They must’ve done it outta spite.
The local cops here cooked their drug dog several years ago. Then a few years later they got another one, but soon decided it was too hard to take care of it and keep up with its training, so they quietly got rid of it (sold it? shot it? they never said) months later. Good riddance. Drug dogs are nothing more than modern day witch-dunking.
But they’re puppies 🙁 abused by pigs, same as us.. in a just world they’d be retrained and given to folks as therapy doggies.
Hi Kent,
The dog is just a poor animal and deserves better, that’s one.
Two, imagine the Hut! Hut! Hutting! if you or I left our dog to die in a hot car. Imagine the Hut! Hut! Hutting! if you or I harmed a “heroic” police dog?
They get fancier funerals than the rest of our pets. Poor brainwashed misused pups.
Y’know..it reads almost like the piece of shit did this on purpose and that the people responsible for disciplining him suggested he do it. How else does that happen only for him to get a slap on the wrist. You’d have to really hate a fuzzy buddy to do that to them..
Hi Moose,
Armed government workers almost always get a slap on the wrist… if they get that. You forget, some animals – so to speak – are more equal than others…
Yeah. It just seems shadier to me than the standard wrist slap, as though it was premeditated and someone higher up turned the other cheek. Or maybe he’s just a seriously sick fuck.