A strange story from the Toronto Police Service (delivered by email):

Monday, July 30, 2007 - 10:38 AM
43 Division
416-808-4300

On Saturday, July 28, 2007, at 1:40 a.m., police were called to an apartment on Scarborough Golf Club Road for a dispute.

It is alleged that:

• three people knocked on the victims' apartment door,
• when the door opened, two Pit Bulls were ordered to attack the victims,
• the accused entered the apartment and assaulted the victims,
• police attended and were confronted by the two Pit Bulls,
• officers used a Taser which failed, then fired their service pistols,
• one dog was killed, the other was wounded and later succumbed to its injuries.

The two victims, 29 and 20, were treated and released from hospital with numerous bite wounds and other non-life-threatening injuries from the assault.

Beverly St. Dennis, 27, of Toronto has been charged with:

1. Assault,
2. two counts of Assault Causing Bodily Harm,
3. five counts of Assault with a Weapon,
4. Unlawfully in a Dwelling.

Calvin Thompson, 24, of Toronto, has been charged with:

1. Assault,
2. Assault Causing Bodily Harm,
3. two counts of Assault with a Weapon,
4. Fail to Comply Recognizance.

Antoinette Hibbert, 24, of Toronto, has been charged with:

1. Unlawfully in a Dwelling.

The accused were scheduled to appear in court at Old City Hall, on Sunday, July 29, 2007, 10 a.m., room 101.

The Toronto Star has more details. The victims of the attack managed to eject the attackers from the apartment, and the confrontation with police happened when the cops went to the residence of the alleged attackers:

Police say one victim alleges he responded to a knock on his apartment door and when he opened it saw the dogs and the assailants. He ran to his infant's bedroom and managed to close the door before just the dogs were ordered to attack.

Police say the two victims were assaulted, but managed to force the intruders and their dogs out before calling for help.

When officers entered the apartment of the dog owners, the dogs lunged at them. The officers fired a taser gun and then hand guns, killing one dog and wounding the other, which later died. The officers were not injured, said Det. Martin Woodhouse of 43 Division.

With an infant in the apartment when the dogs were allegedly set loose, this story could easily have had a truly horrific ending.

Here's a question. Does using an animal as an offensive weapon in this way constitute cruelty? Perhaps not under the strict definition of the crime, but since you've used the animal's natural instincts to put it in a situation in which it is almost certainly going to be killed by the authorities, haven't you essentially murdered the dog?

Even if the dogs had not lunged at police (it isn't clear if the dogs were ordered to by their owners), the dogs allegedly attacked other people on command, and so would likely have been put down had the circumstances of the attack been proven in court.

I suppose the situation does not happen all too often, so it seems unlikely you would need a law to cover it. Still, though, it might be worth having such a crime defined. Obviously, it would aim to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but on a more practical level, it would add one more charge to the list, giving prosecutors more room to maneuvre in dealing away charges in return for guilty pleas.

The story does not mention if the Special Investigations Unit has been called. I'm thinking it has not:

The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency, independent of the police, that investigates circumstances involving police and civilians which have resulted in serious injury, including sexual assault, or death.

I'm thinking under the Police Services Act, the dogs don't count as civilians.