We've had debates about statistics vs anecdotes before, so here are some statistics. Assuming this is the Buffalo Metro area, that gives a population of 1,134,210 according to Wikipedia. The United States has a population of 319,298,000, giving a ratio of 281.5. 281.5 times 42 dogs a year equals 6756 dogs shot in the us per year, or 18.5 dead dogs every day.Buffalo Police have shot an average of 24 dogs per year since 2011, a pace of one dog roughly every two weeks. Due to the lack of a national record-keeping system, however, it's difficult to compare Buffalo's numbers to other municipalities.
Cincinnati Police provided WGRZ-TV with a copy of its use of force records, which revealed officers had shot 27 dogs from Jan. 1, 2011 through Sept. 2014.
The New York City Police Department produces an annual discharge report, publishing its most recent version in 2012. According to those reports, the NYPD shot 72 dogs in 2011 and 2012, but fewer than 30 percent of those cases (21) resulted in fatalities. Buffalo Police – which has a fatality rate of 79 percent since 2011 in officer-involved dog shootings – killed twice as many dogs as the NYPD in that two-year span.
Of course, for every Cincinnati and New York City, there are also cities like Milwaukee, where a lawsuit cited by the Associated Press revealed the police department shot nearly 50 dogs per year from 2000 to 2008. In Southwest Florida, the News-Press discovered 111 instances of dog shootings among multiple agencies between 2009 and 2012, representing about 37 per year. According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Police shot approximately 90 dogs per year between 2008 and 2013.
But the article says that Buffalo may be high, but how high? Even at the extreme, US police shoot several dogs every day somewhere in this country.
