AR-News: (PA - US) Dead dog, an exhumation, and a fired cop: Uproar over Whiskers the dog

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 Dead Dog, an Exhumation and a Fired Cop: the Uproar Over Whiskers
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By Michael Rubinkam Associated Press Writer <IMG  SRC="http://media.tbo.com/tbo/images/spacer.gif" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="4" BORDER="0" DATASIZE="43">
Published: Apr 25, 2004 <IMG  SRC="http://media.tbo.com/tbo/images/spacer.gif" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="4" BORDER="0" DATASIZE="43">

    
    
TAMAQUA, Pa. (AP) - Police officer Scott Michalesko thought he was being 
humane one cold January evening when he shot and killed Whiskers, a 15-year-old 
schnauzer hit by a car one frigid January evening. Not everyone agrees. The 
dog's outraged owner complained, residents questioned Michalesko's judgment and 
his superiors began an investigation. A few weeks after Whiskers' death, the dog 
was exhumed for the animal version of an autopsy. Debate swirled in rural 
Rush Township, about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia: Could this dog have been 
saved? After a series of disciplinary hearings, township officials concluded 
Michalesko had acted recklessly and fired him. Whiskers' owner is preparing a 
lawsuit. Now the veteran police officer is suing to get his $14.42-an-hour job 
back in a case his attorney calls "ridiculous" and "bizarre." "It was 4 
degrees out, the dog was pretty much freezing and wasn't able to move, and 
(Michalesko) just used his best judgment," said the attorney, David Washington. 
Whiskers' owner, Nancy Meiser, thinks otherwise. She points to a necropsy report 
that showed the dog to be in perfectly good health when Michalesko shot him. The 
officer should have tried harder to find the dog's owner - or at least taken 
him to an animal hospital, she said. "I'm still sick over it," said Meiser, 49, 
who adopted Whiskers about five years ago. The incident occurred on Jan. 10, 
when Whiskers wriggled loose from his chain behind the home Meiser shares with 
her 84-year-old father. Michalesko, on patrol, got a call from a dispatcher 
that a dog had been hit. He found the animal about 10 feet from the road, lying 
down and not moving much, he said. He called in the numbers on the dog's 
collar, but a technical error prevented the 911 center from determining the name 
of the owner. Michalesko said he also knocked on a few doors nearby without 
success and asked 911 dispatchers whether there were any 24-hour animal hospitals 
in the area, but was told there were not. Although the schnauzer was not 
mangled or bleeding, Michalesko says he believed the dog's back or hip was broken. 
Michalesko said he prayed and then shot the dog with one round, petting it as 
it died, "so it would know there is somebody there with it," he said. Meiser, 
who was out to dinner when Whiskers got loose, said she searched frantically 
for the dog that night and the following day. She was at work the third day 
when her father called with the news that Whiskers had been killed by a police 
officer. Residents packed the monthly supervisors' meeting a few weeks later, 
demanding answers. A distraught Meiser stood up and read a statement. "What 
gives this officer the right to take another life?" she asked. Township solicitor 
Paul Domalakes admits to being nonplussed by the Whiskers affair. "It blows 
me away," he said. "I was in my first day on the job, show up at my first 
township meeting, and there's TV cameras and everything else there. For Whiskers. I 
thought, 'For heaven's sake.'" AP-ES-04-25-04 1450EDT


    
 
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