(Support Free Thought) - Conway, AR — A graphic video was taken over the weekend which showed a Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office deputy shooting a tiny dog simply because the dog’s owner refused to walk to the road to speak to him. What’s more, the department responded by saying no policies were violated.

The officer in the video was deputy Keenan Wallace, who appeared to become frustrated with the dogs owner, Doug Canady. In the video, Wallace asks Canady to come to the road to talk to him and Canady replies that he will not. That’s when Wallace threatened to kill his dog “Reese’s.”

Canady refuses to come to the road once more and Wallace immediately draws his pistol and shoots the 9-pound dog.

After shooting the tiny dog, Wallace draws his taser and chases down Canady as the dog yelps in agony. Clearly, Wallace is no longer afraid of approaching Canady at this point and proceeds to detain the innocent man without reason or probable cause. Indeed, the only person who’d committed a violation was the deputy himself.

As another deputy shows up, the video ends as Canady is noting that he will not let this shooting go unanswered.

According to NEA report, the sheriff’s department was called by a unknown woman who allegedly claimed that the tiny 9-pound dog was being aggressive toward her. Canady told NEA report that he’s never seen this woman in his neighborhood before but she was apparently walking by his house when Reese’s and a group of other tiny dogs barked at her.

According to the report, the woman pulled out a gun of her own as the dogs barked and pointed it in the direction of his home. After the dog’s barked at her, the woman called 911 and that’s where the video picked up.

Canady who is an emergency helicopter pilot, who spent 21 years in the military flying black hawks says he’s had negative experiences with the Faulkner county sheriff’s department which is why he chose to avoid the confrontation with Wallace. As the video below shows, he was right to do so as it could’ve been him that was shot.

Luckily and near miraculously, the dog survived the shot. A GoFundMe page to raise money for the animal’s veterinary bills has already exceeded its goal.

An update on Sunday noted that Reese’s is still suffering and it not yet out of the woods.

“Reeses is still in the care of the emergency vet receiving treatment. The feeding tube placed on 1/5 was not successful due to bone fragments from shatter in her face. Reeses is not out of danger yet.”

As C.J. Cirarmella noted, “to the extent that the dog posed any threat to the sheriff’s deputy, there was no attempt, at least in the video, to resolve the situation with anything other than lethal force. The deputy didn’t ask Canady to restrain the dog. He didn’t attempt to use a less-than-lethal alternative, like the taser he was armed with and which he subsequently drew on Canady. He simply pulled his gun and shot to kill.”

After being bombarded with phone calls from angry residents, the sheriff’s department responded to the shooting by firing Wallace. However, they were quick to point out that “no policies were violated.”

Sheriff Tim Ryals responded with the following statement:

Since taking office in 2017, I have been an advocate of integrity, professionalism and transparency. I hold my Deputies to the highest of standards to protect and serve the residents of our community. Unfortunately, a Deputy fell short to those standards.
I was notified Friday of an incident involving Deputy Keenan Wallace. Deputy Wallace fired his service weapon that injured an animal while in close proximity to a citizen. I believe there were numerous opportunities to de-escalate the incident.

Over the last 24 hours, at my request, Faulkner County Investigators have been working diligently to investigate whether Deputy Wallace violated any state law or our agency’s policies and procedures. While it appears no policies or laws were violated, I hold every employee within our agency to the highest of standards and will be forwarding the investigation to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for further review.

As a result of the incident that occurred on January 4, 2019, in the Shiloh Estates Subdivision, Deputy Keenan Wallace has been relieved of his duties at the Faulkner County Sheriff’ Office.

TFTP applauds the sheriff for taking action despite no policies being violated. One would think that shooting a tiny dog who is absolutely no threat, however, would be a policy violation.

Wallace was put on administrative leave in 2017 after he shot at an unarmed man for attempting to flee in a vehicle. The department found, as they did this time, that he violated no policies.