Lorain police release body camera footage of officer shooting family's dog (Updated)

The Lorain Police Department has released body camera footage of an officer shooting a family's dog. The incident, which occurred Sunday afternoon near Oberlin Avenue and West Eighth Street, remains under investigation by the department's Office of Professional Standards and outside consultants, according to police The body camera footage from Officer Elliott Palmer was released "in order for the department to be fully transparent about the incident," according to a statement by Acting Police Chief Capt. Michael Failing. "We know the public wants to know more about what happened, which is why we're moving quickly to gather the facts. We will provide that information as soon as we know more." The approximately five-minute-long video starts when Palmer is already on the scene, and is muted until after Palmer shoots the dog. There are three dogs visible in the footage, including a dog that comes up to Palmer just as the video starts before running into a neighboring yard. A woman can be seen trying to hold onto two other dogs by their tails, and one of the dogs gets away from her as Palmer is walking up. The dog that got away runs toward Palmer. He backs up and the dog curves away from him toward the street. Palmer shoots the dog, named Dixie, when she is in the middle of the road, running away from him. In the video, Dixie gets up and drags her hind legs until she is at the end of a neighbor's driveway. Dixie's owner, Tammie Kerns, can be seen walking up to Palmer, yelling at him that he just shot her dog. Her daughter, Mellenie Kerns, was the woman holding Dixie and another dog when Palmer walked up. In the video, Palmer manually unmutes his body camera about 30 seconds into the video and tells dispatch he needs additional cars, as more people were coming out of neighboring houses. He walks over to where Dixie is lying. The dog is sitting up and looking around, moving her tail before Palmer's camera pans away from her and over to Tammie Kerns, who yells at him "You stupid f---. Why did you do it? I'm suing you." Palmer replies, "OK, your dog charged me." And tells her repeatedly to get back. Tammie Kerns disagrees, yelling at him that Dixie was harmless. Soon he and another officer are surrounded by neighbors and Tammie and Mellenie Kerns yelling obscenities at them. At about 2:30 into the video, two people can be seen trying to comfort Dixie. At the roughly 3-minute mark, Palmer manually turns off the audio from his camera while he talks to another officer. About a minute and a half later, he gets in his car and leaves the scene. In his original incident report, obtained by The Chronicle-Telegram on Monday, Palmer wrote that he was patrolling in the area when he saw five large, yellow dogs running in multiple yards. He wrote that the dog charged at him and he feared for his immediate safety, and shot the dog to stop the threat. Another witness included in the initial report said Dixie was about 25 feet away from Palmer when he shot her. Dixie was a 3-year-old yellow Lab retriever mix, her family said. Brittany Kaspirek, Tammie Kerns' daughter, said Wednesday that she and her family are angry after watching the body camera footage, and plan to seek legal action against Palmer. She said Kimberly Goddard, daughter of late Cleveland meteorologist and animal activist Dick Goddard, is involved, and they want to "make sure this man will never do this to any other family." She said Palmer showed no remorse in the video, and that the footage highlighted everything wrong he did. "That dog was wagging its tail coming to him," she said. "… Justice will be served for this dog. We are not playing and are not afraid of anybody." A petition calling for "Justice for Dixie" had more than 3,000 signatures as of Wednesday evening. The petition calls for Palmer's removal from the police force. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.