Heat stroke death of police dog sparks criminal investigation in Tennessee | Tennessee

The recent death of a Tennessee Sheriff’s Office dog after being left in an outdoor kennel without water for a day and a half in excessive heat prompted the animal’s handler to resign amid administrative and criminal investigations, authorities say.

Bart was a patrol dog specializing in apprehension, tracking, searches and drug detection of suspects before his handler found him dead in his outdoor kennel on Sept. 19, Madison County Sheriff Julian Wiser said in a video announcement on social media.

A veterinary autopsy of the two-and-a-half-year-old German Shepherd revealed that he died of heat stroke due to severe dehydration, after investigators learned that Bart’s handler at the Madison Sheriff’s Office had not been home for approximately 36 hours as temperatures climbed to 101 F (38.3 C) and water was inaccessible to the dog.

In his video discussing the case, Wiser called Bart’s death “unfortunate and preventable,” and the sheriff also described himself as a former canine unit supervisor.

“It’s… very sad and unfortunate,” Wiser said in Friday’s video. “We depend on our dogs to keep our community and our law enforcement officers safe, but our dogs depend on us to take care of them.”

Bart’s handler was not immediately identified by Wiser’s office or formally charged with a crime. Wiser said the deputy resigned after being placed on administrative leave.

The sheriff added that his office also issued search warrants as part of concurrent internal and criminal investigations into Bart’s death. Wiser said the resulting findings would be forwarded to prosecutors.

An investigation published in the Police Practice and Research Journal found that heat stroke was the second leading cause of death among police dogs in the line of duty, behind gunshots.

In fact, heatstroke was responsible for one in five deaths, the survey found.

“Being left unattended and mechanical failure characterized the vast majority (70.6%) of these heatstroke deaths,” says a summary of the investigation, which studied information on more than 400 dog deaths listed on the Officer Down Memorial Page website.

According to the survey summary, “summer months were also significantly implicated in increasing the risk of line-of-duty heatstroke deaths.”