As Leon Rosby is arrested by Hawthorne, California police officers, one officer shoots and kills his dog after the dog escapes from Rosby’s vehicle to protect him, Sunday, June 30, 2013.
It seems that the only way to keep police officers throughout the country honest is to film them. Nowadays, whenever something happens that calls for police involvement, many of us are whippin’ out the trusty cell phone cam and filming.
Well one man in Hawthorne, Calif., was doing just that when police came and arrested him. According to the Daily Mail, Leon Rosby, 52, was walking his 3-year-old, 130-pound, Rottweiler, Max, around 7 p.m. Sunday, when he saw an intense police scene. There were several police cars and an armored truck for what appeared to be some sort of raid on a home.
Rosby was filming the scene along with several others and police started toward him. According to the report, he was being arrested for filming and possibly playing his music too loud. One neighbor claimed that Rosby told police that Rosby yelled, “It’s my (expletive) radio!” But Rosby denied the claim saying that he is a christian and he doesn’t swear.
“I do apologize if I didn’t immediately comply,’ Rosby said. ‘The music may have been a little loud but I was complying.”
Rosby locked his dog in his car, but the dog got loose to try and protect his owner and one of the police opened fire as the dog lunged at them. Rosby is in the process of suing the police department for killing his dog.
“There was no way Max should have died like that,’ Rosby said. ‘Max was only protecting his master. He was trying to stop them from beating on me.”
“All he did was love me,” he added.
Rosby already has an attorney that was working on previous harassment he experienced from the Hawthorne police when they came into his home and beat him and his attorney Michael Gulden is adding the dog’s death to the complaint.
“There’s been a pattern of harassment against him and other African-Americans in Hawthorne. Last July, the police responded to his home and beat him unnecessarily, then threw him in jail for no reason. We sued for that. We’ll amend that complaint to include the dog incident,” Gulden said.
Read more here. We have provided the incident below, but we warn that the incident may be disturbing.
-J.C. Brooks