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Facebook photo on Kenneth Savage's page.
A Detroit couple is suing the city of Detroit and police in federal court, alleging officers shot and killed their three dogs while trying to seize legal pot plants in their backyard last July 22.
Kenneth Savage, an electrician, and Ashley Danyelle Franklin sued June 28.
The 18-page lawsuit states that eight officers came to the house in the 16000 block of Cruse Street in northwest Detroit around 11 a.m. to execute a search warrant.
Two days earlier, they were conducting an investigation unrelated to Savage and Franklin and noticed marijuana plants in their backyard.
Days after the raid and shooting, Savage posted this on Facebook, referring to his three dogs as family:
Saturday morning my family was brutally murdered by the fine men and women of the Detroit Police Department! They were shot down with well over 25 rounds of deadly AR-15 assault rifle bullets. My 3 babies; Mother, father and daughter were behind a chained locked gate and privacy fencing. They were executing a warrant the day before elsewhere and claimed they took notice of the garden I was preparing to put in the earth and noticed hemp plants!!
They come back the following day and with a fake-ass warrant, raided my home, wanted access to my garden where my dogs were. They dispatched Animal control to come remove the dogs.
Rather than wait and follow proper procedure, these people slaughter the complete Trinity of them.
A police search warrant affidavit says cops were "aware of a medical marijuana card" to grow pot, but because the plants were visible to the public, they were illegal, the lawsuit said. Police wrote that they had stumbled upon what appeared to be a "covert marijuana grow operation."
The plaintiff, Franklin, told the officers he had documents to prove the marijuana plants were legal.
When Franklin asked officers to see a search warrant, one cop stated, according to the suit: "If you keep asking for a warrant, we are gonna kill those dogs and call child protective services to pick up your kid."
The lawsuit says police couldn't access the marijuana plants in the yard, which was surrounded by an eight-foot privacy fence, because of the three dogs, Isis, Heru and Beautiful. It also said the police report "falsely states" that the officers tried unsuccessfully to round up the dogs.
"They did not," the suit alleges.
Backyard Executions
The suit says a police report said a sergeant determined that it would be unsafe to capture the dogs and it was best to destroy them.
The officers then went behind the fence and shot the three dogs, the lawsuit says.
"At no time did the City of Detroit police officers give plaintiffs and opportunity to sequester the dogs to permit them to access the backyard where the subject marijuana was located," the suit said. "Plaintiff Franklin offered to take the marijuana from the backyard and give it to the police but . . . officers refused."
Sadly, the suit said, Detroit Animal Control arrived less than 10 minutes after the dogs, all licensed, were shot.
The suit accuses the city of not properly training officers to deal with such situations and asks for damages.
A police spokesman tells Deadline Detroit that the department isn't doesn't comment on pending litigation.
The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Christopher Olson of Royal Oak, did not immediately respond for comment Monday night.
