Officer kills a resident’s dog
Posted/updated on: May 18, 2026 at 10:13 pm
ARP – The Arp Police Department has released body camera footage from an officer who shot a resident’s dog on Friday while he was responding to a fire. According to our news partner KETK, and Arp PD, the officer was getting off of another service call at around 7:40 p.m. on Friday when he saw black smoke rising from a property a few streets away. When he got to the scene, he saw a 20-foot tall fire emerging from behind a residence and so headed towards the fire to see if the residence was in danger.
Arp Police Chief Joe Keegan said in a statement on Saturday that the officer was walking towards the property’s fence when two dogs approached from the other side of the fence and crawled under it. The officer feared for his safety as the dogs reportedly attempted to attack him so he fired two shots from his department issued pistol, hitting one of the two dogs.
The officer then activated his body camera as the shot dog fled and a resident approached from across the fence. The footage shows the second dog continued to approach the officer so he called for backup and his supervisor.
Keegan arrived at the scene at around 7:55 p.m. to speak with the officer and the dogs’ owner.
“I arrived on scene at approximately 7:55 p.m. and immediately spoke with Officer Pereida and the owner of the dogs,” Keegan said. “During our conversation, the owner stated that ‘everyone around here knows my dogs will bite’ and believed the officer should have ‘taken a bite’ before discharging his firearm.”
Keegan stated that Texas law doesn’t require an officer’s camera to always be recording and he stated that there’s no current technology that can record an entire shift.
Keegan also commented on a recent dog bite incident from the Strawberry Festival where an officer decided not to shoot a dog because of the amount of people nearby. The chief said he supports both officer’s decisions.
Saturday’s statement did not include whether the dog died following the shooting. Also in this article is the video obtained by KETK below:
