Danville animal shelter, police receive death threats

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Danville chief defends officer in dachshund shooting

 

The Danville Area Humane Society and the Danville Police Department have received death threats following the June 8 shooting of a miniature dachshund named Killer.

“It seems that this has attracted a lot of attention, and a lot of horrible things have been said,” Paulette Dean, the executive director of the humane society, said.

During a Monday afternoon news conference at the Municipal Building, Police Chief Philip Broadfoot and Dean asked the community to stop the threats.

“It’s an appeal to everyone to sit back and calm down and work toward preventing this from happening again,” Broadfoot said. “We can’t go back and change things. What’s done is done.” 

Broadfoot said the community reaction to the shooting’s circumstances surprised him.

“It is clear that I greatly misjudged what the public reaction would be to officer McLean’s fear of rabies,” Broadfoot said in a prepared statement. “Many citizens of Danville and around the nation simply did not accept that fear as reasonable and as justification for deadly force.”

To address that fear, Broadfoot said all officers would be allowed to take a series of three preventative rabies shots.

Broadfoot said he is not aware of any specific threats, but people have used a lot of “fatal terms” when talking about the department. Broadfoot and Dean added that they were not sure how many threats the department and humane society had received, but Broadfoot said the number of threats were the most in recent memory.

“We have received many at the shelter,” Dean said. “I’ve been reading online, and that’s what I was going by.”

Broadfoot said he told the officers that some angry people are out there, but no other action has been taken.

“This was a tragic situation, but it’s disturbing when people make threats against an officer,” Dean said. “I think the Internet is giving it a life of its own.”

• Contact Tomsic at or (434) 791-7993.