Photo via @haleyjrichey/Twitter
December 1, 2021, 11:06 am
A disturbing video from a home’s Ring camera was posted to Twitter by the owner after she discovered that the house had been broken into, only for the invaders to be chased off by her dogs. This occurred while Haley Richey and any other human occupants were away, but a neighbor apparently noticed the commotion and called the police. This may have been their worst mistake of the night.
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After the home invaders were already long gone, two police officers showed up at Richey’s house following the neighbor’s call. The video shows one of her dogs on the front porch, barking at the approaching officers as dogs will often do, especially if they’re meant to protect a person’s home, though it does not exhibit particularly aggressive behavior or warning signs.
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For some inconceivable reason, the first cop begins viciously kicking the dog, pursuing it as it screams and cowers back against the front door to kick it again and again until it manages to escape and flee for its life. The officer then pounds on the door to the empty home, being about as useless as police ever are.
“Yesterday evening while my family and I were at work, someone broke into my home,” Richey wrote on her new Twitter account. “My dogs ran the intruder off. This was the response shortly after a neighbor called. My home needed help and all it received was hurt.”
Commenters have identified the area in which Richey lives as Terre Haute, Indiana, served by the Terre Haute Police Department. Some have further suggested that the dog-kicker in the video is Sergeant Jesse Chambers, who is listed as the president of the city’s police union, the Terre Haute Police Officer’s Local 133.
There does not yet appear to be any comment from the department, though many noticed the irony of the last tweet from their union was about a police dog who was “laid to rest” in October. The union’s banner image on their Twitter account is the “thin blue line” flag.
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The ring video has gained over 290,000 views since being posted on Tuesday afternoon with thousands retweeting and commenting their disgust over this completely unnecessary violence against a perfectly good dog just doing its job. Richey posted a follow-up statement a few hours later expressing her hope that human beings in general can do better and thanking people for their support and sympathy.
“I can’t wrap my head around how easy it was to approach my dogs the way they were,” she said. “I have no hate, but pain for the individual. How easy was it to approach my pets that only had the option to yelp and run to defend themselves? How are others, not just pets being treated in our community?”
The answer to that, of course, largely depends on the shade of one’s skin and whether one is disabled or mentally ill in some way. But for those on the wrong places on those spectrums, the result is often worse than what Richey’s dog endured.
“This is the way our society will continue to be if nothing changes,” Richey continued. “The brutality that continues to take place should be enough, but there seems to be a never-ending cycle. It’s hard to feel protection nowadays, yet it’s easy to be intimidated from these fears.”
*First Published: December 1, 2021, 11:06 am
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