When Dogs Attack

This is a frightening and bizarre story.

An incident at a news station became the news.

There was even video documenting what happened when pit bulls attacked staff.

It was caught on security cameras and additional footage was shot by an operations manager who was injured in the attack. That's dedication.

From TMJ4:

It was like a scene from a movie: four wild dogs, viciously barking and attacking members of our news staff.

It happened late Wednesday night just after 11 p.m. outside the east security gate at TODAY'S TMJ4 on E. Capitol Dr. at Humboldt. The round up took almost two hours.

Four pit bulls ran to a female custodian, 33, who was waiting outside the gate for a ride, biting her right leg severely. She managed to escape and her ride rushed her to St. Mary's Hospital.

Newsradio 620 WTMJ anchor Mike Neil said he saw the dogs outside the gate and tried to keep them around his car, distracted, until the cops could arrive.

"i was able to keep them around my van," he said. "I would roll down my window, yell, get them all excited, jumping up. They were salivating on my window trying to get at me!"

Meanwhile, another member of our staff, a 57-year-old news operations manager, unaware of what had happened, was outside throwing away newspapers when he heard the dogs barking and walked over toward Neil's encircled car, thinking he could help. The dogs managed to crawl under the security gate and attacked him, too, biting him in five places.

"One or two of them grabbed hold (of) my right leg as (I) fled up the mailroom stairs," he wrote in an e-mail. "I couldn't kick the dogs off.. they were almost all the way up to the top of my leg. Finally (I) made it inside the mailroom door, but the last dog wouldn't let go until I closed the door on him."

...About a dozen police officers arrived to try and capture the dogs. TMJ4 employees even grabbed leftovers in the break room refrigerator to try to distract the dogs. By 1:30 a.m., authorities were able to capture one dog in a snare and taser three others.

The cleaning crew member was seriously hurt, and the emergency room doctor said she will need plastic surgery on her leg. She required stitches and sedation.

The other man hurt was assisted by an ambulance and will be OK. A 41-year-old police officer was also bitten on the hand.

Obviously, being attacked by vicious dogs is frightening. The victims had reason to fear for their lives. It's a nightmare come true.

What's weird is that "a dozen police officers" worked for more than half an hour to capture the dogs.

Why? Why would officers risk their own safety to spare the lives of bloodthirsty dogs?

Facing off with vicious pit bulls for more than half an hour isn't humane. It's stupid.

If they didn't want to kill the dogs, couldn't someone from the humane society or animal control have arrived and shot them with tranquilizers within that same, long time frame.

TWELVE cops should not have been spending so much time with the dogs. Certainly, their time would have been better spent patrolling the city streets. Tax dollars would have been better spent.

I adore animals. I love dogs. But in this case, the safety of people in the community should have been the number one priority, not the dogs.

Although they were someone's "pets" (they wore collars) and not strays, the dogs were wild and potentially deadly attackers.

The owner of these "pets" hasn't claimed the dogs. (There's a shocker.)

In TMJ4's televised report, it's noted that after a taser was used to subdue the animals, the officers tried to comfort the dogs.

Huh?

Frankly, that seems more than a bit out of whack.

I would have been more impressed if the report mentioned that the officers cared for the human victims.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

WTMJ-AM (620) overnight news anchor Mike Neil said the dogs were frenzied and ignored police attempts to bait them with food.

"They were out for blood, man. They didn't want food, they wanted human flesh," Neil said.

These dogs are a menace. They have no place in the city.

Thankfully, no people were killed this time.