Parrot the Dog DC Police Incident: Not Related to Occupy Movement

You have to love social media, where old news can resurface and become new again. This week has seen a surge in the sharing of the photo of Parrot, the dog who was killed by police during a Washington DC festival.

The caption reads:

The dog was named Parrot. 
This was taken moments before Parrot was murdered by the cop. The cop drove his knee into the middle of Parrot’s back while stretching Parrot’s forelegs behind him, as one would do with an armed criminal. Without waiting to determine whether this technique would calm Parrot, the cop grabbed Parrot, lifted him off the ground, and brought him to the top of the concrete staircase. 

He threw Parrot over the banister, down twelve steps, and onto the concrete floor. Then, the cop stood at the top of the stairs, drew his weapon, and executed Parrot. Aaron, the animal’s owner, cannot recall the number of shots fired. Witnesses state that Parrot was not harming anybody and was simply frightened by the cop. At no time did Parrot try to bite the officer, all he did was start barking.

It doesn’t matter if you are a part of an Occupy movement, PETA, Republican, Democrat, Independant Religious or not, if you are a part of the human race this should be a wake up call that something is very wrong with our society.

Isn’t brutally killing animals something that most Serial Killers do right before they switch to killing humans?

Eyewitness account vary wildly, and it’s doubtful that the truth will ever fully come out. Was the officer protecting himself and others from an aggressive dog, or did the officer get caught up in the moment and over-react? It’s a terrible story no matter how you look at it.

There is an implication from the caption that this image and the events surrounding it are recent and perhaps even related to the Occupy protests. They are not. This happened at a festival in 2010 and already received significant news coverage. Most of the text in the caption was taken verbatim from news stories dating from September 2010. The “occupy” reference was apparently added later to imply some sort of connection. The name of the page sharing the photo is “999,999,999 People” which also loosely reminds one of the “99%” identified with the Occupy movement.

There are two completely different issues at hand here: Animal abuse and the Occupy movement. Here at Waffles, we are absolutely committed to wiping out animal cruelty. We also support the Occupy movement’s right to protest.

That said, the timing of the resurfacing of this photo, and dropping the “Occupy” name in the caption are questionable. It doesn’t directly make the connection, but it is implied and should not be. It’s OK to be upset about the officer’s actions toward Parrot. It’s also OK to be upset about some of the police actions at the Occupy movements, but these two events are not related.

Note: A source originally used for this article, posted by MyFoxDC.com, has since been removed from that site.