A closer look at the Hawthorne Police Department, which recently shot a man's dog after arresting him for filming police officers, shows a disturbing history of police misconduct

I was hanging out on Facebook last night and came across the video above (warning: it's not pleasant).

The video was shocking and it made me sad. I immediately found my dog and hugged him.

Then I got online and did more research and what I found was more disturbing and pretty upsetting.

The video above shows a man standing on a corner with a Rottweiler filming a police incident that occurred Sunday. There are at least five cop cars in the street and the officers are clearly involved in something.

The man, Leon Rosby, walks across the street while holding either a camera or a cell phone and then back across the street where he is for the majority of the video. His dog does what dogs do: spends a lot of time sniffing the ground.

A few minutes into the video, two officers are seen walking the opposite way down the street from Rosby, then they take a few steps towards him. Rosby walks to his car and tells his dog, Max, to get into the car. He then walks towards the officers, stops a couple of steps away from the officers, turns around and places his hands behind his back.

Cops then handcuff him as Max watches. He starts barking and jumps out of the car window towards his owner and the group of officers. When he gets closer, Rosby is able to verbally get his dog under control and the dog goes back to sniffing the ground. Then another officer comes out of seemingly nowhere and tries to reach for the dog.

The dog gets scared and jumps up. The officer than fires four rounds into the dog as two other officers restrain Rosby as his hands are handcuffed behind him. Rosby spent the night in jail on suspicion of obstruction and was released the next morning, according to The Daily Breeze.

That article contains more details, specifically that Rosby's actions leading up to the incident may not have been the smartest. He drove by the street, saw the cop cars, pulled over, left his radio on, got out of his car, and started filming.

Rosby has a history with the Hawthorne Police Department. He has several convictions and has filed six complaints against the agency for mistreatment and racial profiling. He also claims that in March officers broke one of his ribs when they responded to a domestic violence disturbance at his house, nearby where his dog was shot.

The police, who were responding to an armed robbery call, claim that the music from Rosby's car was distracting and preventing them from being able to communicate with each other as they addressed the situation. They claim the distracting music was the reason for his initial arrest.

That story also contains one of the most ridiculous quotes I've ever heard: "Hawthorne police Lt. Scott Swain said "And I know it's the dog's master, and more than likely not going to attack him, (but) we've got a guy handcuffed that's kind of defenseless. We have a duty to defend him, too.""

That's a real quote from the agency's Public Informations Officer, according to the department's Facebook page. I was unable to access the department's actual website.

This quote upsets me almost as much as the actual incident does. It turned my reaction from being sad to being mad. It's an insult to everyone's intelligence. It's an insult to dog lovers or anyone who knows anything about dogs. Or has even the tiniest bit of commonsense.

There's a lot of things Lt. Scott Swain could have said. He could have called the situation an unfortunate incident, admitted things got a little out of control or even played the officer safety card. Instead, he chose to tell the public, including the taxpaying citizens of Hawthorne, that the reason they shot a dog belonging to a man they were arresting was for that same man's protection.

Does Lt. Scott Swain really expect anyone to believe that?

So, there's no chance at all the dog thought he was seeing something bad happening to his owner and he was trying to protect him? Apparently not.

Instead, Lt. Scott Swain tells us that there was a chance that the dog, who was three years old, was about to attack the man who had cared for him since he was six weeks old and who was surrounded by strange men? That's the story you want to tell us, Lt. Scott Swain?

I can't pretend to know what was going on in Max's mind as he approached the group, but I'm going to guess Max wasn't sitting in the car, saw his owner being arrested, saw his hands secured behind his back and thought, "Hey, this is my chance to get back at Leon for that time I wanted to go on a walk in the rain and he choose to stay inside and watch the football game instead. I'll show him."

I'm pretty sure that's not the case and the fact that Rosby was able to control the dog verbally while being restrained shows that the likelihood of this incident ending without Max being fatally shot was probably high. It could have ended a number of different ways. (It could have also been a non-issue in the first place, but that's a whole different conversation.) But instead, it ended with a man watching his dog being shot in front of him at the hands of a police officer.

The Hawthorne Police Department has refused to release the name of that officer. However, Rosby, in an interview, claims the name of the officer who shot his dog is named Officer Salmon.

The police chief has contradicted Rosby's claim. While the department has not released the name of the shooter,the three officers involved in the video have been relieved of street duty for their protection while the department conducts two investigations into the shooting.

An interesting thing happened when I typed "Officer Salmon Hawthorne" into Google. (Click on the link, should be the fifth article down.)

This story came up. The headline: "Hawthorne Police Department Pays $1,000,000 To Settle Police Brutality & Corruption Lawsuit."

Wonder what that's about?

According to the subhead, "The Hawthorne Police Department paid One Million Dollars to a Settle Lawsuit in which it was alleged a man was kicked in the face while handcuffed and then falsely prosecuted along with his wife to cover up the brutality. Evidence the plaintiffs were prepared to present at trial included a photograph of an officer appearing to kick the handcuffed plaintiff in the face and a surveillance video allegedly depicting officers high-fiving each other as the injured plaintiff suffered from a broken jaw."

That story ran in February 2009. According to that story, "Officers Ian Elliot, Thomas Heffner, Melanie Newenham, Renee Descant, Jeffrey Salmon, David Gregor and Jailer Darnell Wallace were among defendants named in the lawsuit."

Woah, an Officer Salmon was involved in a story about police officer brutality and corruption?!? Say it ain't so!

Guess what happens when you run "Officer Jeffrey Salmon Hawthorne?" You get this story, which ran 13 days later, which states, "A third officer, Jeffrey Salmon, who acknowledged kicking Goodrow twice in the ribs, testified that he was aware of an investigation but was never interviewed."

Not only are Hawthorne police officers kicking people in the ribs, then arresting them, they aren't even being investigated for doing so. It's a good thing that other people were on scene recording Rosby recording the police or this incident may never have came to public light.

I also found

this video, a half hour interview by civil rights attorney Gary S. Casselman going in-depth about Hawthorne's less than stellar police record.

In 1991, the city paid another cool million dollars to the family of a man whose family claimed they shot him in retaliation for previously attacking police officers. Police officers maintained that they were being attacked when they fired at him. The city settled the lawsuit for $1 million of 1991 money.

In 2011, a police officer was offered $32,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging he was unfairly demoted by the city's former police chief. Maybe he was fired because of his involvement in an office prank sometime earlier. Maybe he was demoted in response to the officer's involvement in a union action against the former chief a year prior to his demotion.

In 1985, the department was involved in another million dollar lawsuit for a dispute between a female officer and another former police chief. She claimed "her career was stolen from her because she is a woman, because she married a fellow officer and because of a report that unfairly labeled her as a brutal cop." The police chief basically claimed she was crazy.

In 2009, the department paid $275,000 to settle another dispute between an officer and a citizen with a broken jaw.

The Daily Breeze reported that amount put the department over the $2 million mark in payouts in a five year period (2004-2009). That apparently covers 15 claims of excessive force and other civil rights allegations.

The Hawthorne Police Department has a long history of police misconduct. It's hard to believe that the shooting of Rosby's Rottweiler was an isolated incident. Not when the department's paid so much money over multiple decades for its own misconduct. Police should serve and protect its citizens. It's clear that isn't happening in Hawthorne.

The citizens of Hawthorne need someone to protect them from their own police department.

If the video above offends you, hug your dog. Hug your neighbor's dog. Then write a letter to the police department at 12501 Hawthorne Blvd, Hawthorne, CA 90250. Or the city hall at: 4455 W 126th St, Hawthorne, CA 90250.