Owner of dog killed by Miami-Dade police officer speaks out on lawsuit’s progress – NBC 6 South Florida

The owner of a dog shot and killed by Miami-Dade police nearly four years ago is speaking out after a federal appeals court ruled his lawsuit against the officer who fired the shot could proceed.

Sylvan Plowright called 911 on October 5, 2020, to report that someone had trespassed on a vacant lot near his home.

Officers Sergio Cordova and Leordanis Rondon went to the house, where they encountered Plowright and his American bulldog, Niles.

The tense standoff was captured on police body camera footage as police ordered Plowright to put his hands in the air and grab Niles.

“Get the dog, I’m going to shoot him!” an officer yells as Niles approaches. “Get the dog!”

An officer pulls out a taser as Niles continues to bark and advance toward the officers.

“Grab him before I taser him!” the officer screams in the video.

Moments later, the sound of the taser being fired can be heard before several shots are fired.

Niles can be heard screaming as Plowright is overwhelmed by his emotions.

“I called the police! I live here, this is my house!” says Plowright.

“I told you to pick him up. How many times did I have to tell you?” says an officer.

According to court documents, Rondon was the officer who deployed the Taser while Cordova fired the fatal shots.

“It wasn’t my dog’s fault,” Plowright said in an interview with NBC6 this week, adding that he was paralyzed with fear during the encounter.

“I was spoken to in such a hostile manner that I could not defend myself or my dog ​​when I was asked to get your dog. But the way I was asked to get my dog ​​and the foul language was so hostile that I could not move,” he said.

Plowright said the loss of Niles is still affecting him emotionally.

“I never expected to no longer have him by my side,” he said.

Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned key parts of a district judge’s decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by Plowright after the shooting.

The appeals court said Plowright could assert civil claims against Cordova for wrongful seizure of property under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

While appeals courts in other parts of the country have made similar decisions, the panel said this was the first such decision in the 11th Circuit, which hears cases from Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

“According to Plowright, Cordova came to his home after he called 911, threatened him with a gun, and shot his dog in front of him for no reason, even though the dog had been ‘incapacitated’ by a Taser and was ‘incapable of harming anyone,'” said the 24-page ruling, written by Judge Jill Pryor and joined by Chief Judge William Pryor and Judge Stanley Marcus.

Plowright had filed a lawsuit naming Cordova, Rondon, Miami-Dade County and then-Miami-Dade Police Chief Alfredo Ramirez as defendants. A district judge dismissed the lawsuit, but the appeals court ruling allowed the lawsuit to proceed against Cordova but not the other defendants.

The lower court concluded that Cordova was entitled to so-called qualified immunity “because he did not violate any clearly established right by shooting Niles,” the appeals court’s decision said.

The appeals court, however, disagreed, finding that Plowright had sufficiently shown a violation of his right to protection from wrongful seizure of his property under the Fourth Amendment. It said Florida law was “clear that pets are the personal property of their owners.”

“Second, shooting a pet undoubtedly interferes with its owner’s property interests, which prompts the same analysis that applies to an officer’s destruction of other forms of property,” the ruling states. “To be constitutionally permissible, Cordova’s decision to shoot Niles must have been reasonable.”

In appealing whether the lawsuit should have been dismissed before a possible trial, the panel said the case was at a stage “where we must accept the factual allegations in Plowright’s complaint as true. If we do so, we conclude that a reasonable officer in Cordova’s position would not have believed he was in imminent danger when he shot Niles.”

In a brief statement Friday, Miami-Dade police said they could not comment on pending litigation.

Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, said the two officers were cleared of any wrongdoing and did not know that Plowright was the homeowner who had called police before shooting the dog.

“They confronted a perpetrator and while they were dealing with the perpetrator, an aggressive dog comes by. On the body cameras you can hear him telling him, ‘Get the dog, get the dog, deal with the dog.’ He didn’t do that, the dog came out, one officer used a taser that didn’t work, the second officer was forced to fire his weapon,” Stahl said. “You can’t just let the dog sit there and attack and bite others, that’s what we’re trained to do, we’re trained to stop that kind of thing.”

Plowright said he doesn’t want what happened to him to happen to other pet owners.

“I don’t think this should ever happen to anyone else, and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” he said.