Police training, historical sources, and legal scholarship that provide context for the issues.
Dog encounters · Human safety · Public sources
When Police Shoot at a Dog, Human Safety Is Also at Stake
A police shooting involving a dog is not only an animal-welfare issue. It also raises a fundamental question of public safety: what danger does the gunfire create for people nearby?
That concern is recognized in The Problem of Dog-Related Incidents and Encounters, a guide published by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The 2015 revision discusses injuries to officers and bystanders from gunfire directed at dogs and describes training and tactics intended to reduce avoidable harm. The guide is a professional resource, not a binding legal rule or an official Department of Justice policy. Read the dog-encounter guide, printed pp. 7, 26–28 ↗
Broader police guidance points in the same direction. The International Association of Chiefs of Police’s 2020 consensus materials emphasize feasible de-escalation and reassessing the need for force as control is achieved. These materials are not dog-specific and expressly do not establish a binding national standard. Read the consensus materials, pp. 3–5 and 11 ↗
The human-safety concern is directly reflected in the public record of the April 21, 2024 shooting of Aggie. In its May 28, 2024 public release, Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) described an off-duty officer firing while the owner was regaining control of the dog. The agency reported that no person was struck, but explained that the incident qualified for public video release because the discharge potentially could have struck a person. That was the agency’s preliminary account, not a final determination of liability. Read COPA’s May 28, 2024 public release ↗
These sources do not decide the disputed facts or the legal claims. They help explain why the inquiry should extend beyond whether two dogs initially became engaged: what danger remained when the shot was fired, and what risk did firing create for the person nearby?
Justice for Aggie advocates careful scrutiny, humane policing and public accountability. Protecting people must remain central to the discussion.
CPD policy · Human safety · Decision-making research
The duty to reassess—and the ability to stop
A decision to shoot must remain a decision that can be stopped.
An officer’s initial assessment cannot settle the question for the rest of an encounter. A changing threat, a person’s position, and the danger created by the proposed shot all matter. When the intended target is a dog, a human being in the line of fire is central to that assessment.
What the rules require
Keep assessing and change course. CPD General Order G03-02, effective June 28, 2023, §§ II.D.1–2 and III.B.2, requires continuing assessment of the situation, modification of force as circumstances change consistently with officer safety, and “stopping the use of force when it is no longer necessary.” It also requires consideration of alternatives. Read the order, pp. 2–3 ↗
Account for people other than the target. Paragraph 182 of the Chicago consent decree requires officers to consider their surroundings before firing and take reasonable precautions to prevent striking someone other than the intended target. Read ¶ 182 ↗
Continue reassessing during firearm use. Paragraph 184 requires continued assessment of the circumstances supporting discharge, adjustment of force, and cessation when the circumstances no longer require firing. Read ¶ 184 ↗
The linked G03-02 is a reproduced CPD document bearing a June 28, 2023 effective date and September 18, 2025 print timestamp. The Independent Monitoring Team’s eighth report, pp. 88–89 ↗, also documents CPD’s continuing-assessment policy and training before the April 2024 incident.
How shooting decisions can go wrong
Stopping an intended action · 2022
The role of inhibitory control in shoot/don’t-shoot decisions
Biggs and Pettijohn examined realistic military shooting simulations. Among 62 participants who completed the shooting tasks, the ability to stop a response predicted unintended casualties even after accounting for marksmanship and shots fired. This makes inhibitory control—the ability to suppress an intended action—a particularly relevant research concept for the duty to reassess.
The study found an association in simulations. It did not study CPD, dogs, or this encounter.
Nieuwenhuys and colleagues tested 36 police officers in video scenarios. Under higher anxiety, officers more often shot suspects who surrendered. Eye-gaze behavior appeared unchanged; the authors interpreted the result as greater reliance on threat expectations rather than relevant visual information. The finding does not establish literal tunnel vision or explain any particular officer’s actions.
Dispatch Priming and the Police Decision to Use Deadly Force
In Taylor’s randomized simulator experiment involving 306 active law enforcement officers, erroneous dispatch information increased shooting errors when the person encountered was ambiguously armed. It illustrates how an initial expectation can influence a later decision. It is not evidence that dispatch information influenced Mostek.
Cognitive dissonance concerns the discomfort of conflicting beliefs, information, or conduct. People may reduce it by changing their behavior or beliefs, but also by defending a decision or discounting contrary information. Harmon-Jones and Mills explain these processes in their 2019 APA introduction to the theory ↗.
That theory may help frame questions about persistence and later justification. For the immediate ability to withhold a shot as circumstances change, inhibitory control and threat assessment are the more direct concepts. These sources explain general mechanisms; none establishes Mostek’s mental state or excuses an unjustified shot.
Laquan McDonald and Chicago’s police accountability reforms
Why transparency became a reform imperative
The video and the delay. Laquan McDonald was killed on October 20, 2014. Chicago released the dash-camera video on November 24, 2015, following a court order—more than thirteen months later. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) subsequently described officers’ reports that appeared inconsistent with the video and criticized the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) for its failure to initiate false-report investigations. WTTW’s contemporaneous report ↗ · DOJ report, printed p. 77 ↗
Creating a new oversight agency. The reform process after the video’s release included replacing IPRA. City Council established the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) on October 5, 2016; it opened on September 15, 2017. Its creation therefore preceded the January 2017 DOJ findings. IPRA’s 2016 annual report ↗ · COPA’s official history and opening dates ↗
DOJ’s diagnosis. The January 13, 2017 report linked unconstitutional force to systemic failures of training and accountability. It described concealment and a code of silence, investigations delayed until evidence weakened, and discipline that failed to deter misconduct. Those were findings about institutional practices examined in that investigation. Read the DOJ report, printed pp. 46–47, 72–83 ↗
This history supplies the basis for Maynard’s criticism of the City’s present position. It does not itself establish motive, misconduct, or the causal connection required for municipal liability in his case. The dismissed Monell claims and the separate legal standard are addressed below.
Institutional and legal background
Separate historical sources and Monell context
These materials provide general background only. They do not establish liability, notice, causation, or the truth of any disputed allegation in this case.
2017
U.S. Department of Justice findings
A historical report concerning practices across the Chicago Police Department (CPD). It is not a finding about the April 2024 incident.
A municipality is not liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 merely because it employs an officer who commits a constitutional violation. A plaintiff must identify a municipal policy or custom and show a direct causal link: the policy or custom must have been the “moving force” behind the alleged constitutional injury.
Instructive pleading-stage example
Maglaya v. City of Chicago
In Maglaya, another case involving a Chicago police officer’s shooting of a dog, Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. held that allegations of an intentional failure to investigate and discipline police misconduct, combined with an alleged police “code of silence,” plausibly supported an inference that officers were emboldened to act without fear of consequences. The alleged resulting culture of presumed invulnerability supplied a plausible “moving force” theory at the motion-to-dismiss stage.
The court did not find those alleged practices true or impose liability. It dismissed a separate, broadly pleaded equal-protection Monell claim and an unsupported failure-to-train theory, illustrating that labels and generalized allegations are insufficient without factual support and causation.
Counts II and III in Maynard, which asserted Monell municipal-liability theories, were dismissed. Maglaya is presented only as general legal context; it does not revive those counts or establish a policy, custom, causal connection, or municipal liability in this case.
On October 30, 2026, Judge Harjani denied Maynard’s motion for leave to add a Monell count in a Second Amended Complaint and struck the November 4 hearing (ECF No. 220). The court found no good cause under Rule 16 and, alternatively, futility and substantial prejudice under Rule 15. The proposed count is not part of the operative case. The separate respondeat-superior and statutory-indemnification claims against the City are addressed in the scope-of-employment discussion. Read the procedural update →