Alternative methods were possible, but not exercised

To the editor:

As the author of the letter, “Was shooting the correct approach,” from the Nov. 2 edition of the Pioneer, I’d like to rebut Mr. Coates’ highly inflammatory statements from his Nov. 16 letter, “Blame owner, not officer for dog death.”

First, I am white. It is purely a symbol of human ignorance to call someone racist without first knowing anything about them and as such, I take the derogatory comments made about me as nothing more than a sign of the writer’s obvious close-mindedness.

Second, I am a long-time volunteer for a local dog rescue organization. I have some experience in working with aggressive animals and I know from watching the video footage that Officer Wheeler was not using common caution in approaching the dog.

Third, I do not believe Officer Wheeler is racist and I never said such a thing in the original article.

What I did was ask if our campus security officers might be engaging in racial profiling by assuming a pit bull accompanying a black man was aggressive.

I will not be making any apologies for asking a perfectly legitimate question.

Fourth, Mr. Coates is correct when he says the student is at fault. However, there is nothing the college can do to prevent students or visitors from exercising irrational judgment.

There are things the college can do to regulate the activities and actions of its employees. Training in handling aggressive animals should be required for our security staff, or, at the very least, they should be given the phone number to animal control.

Even use of a taser would have been better than shooting this dog, aggressive or not.

I suggest Mr. Coates spend some time with homeless, abandoned and abused animals.

If the only thing he took away from my original article was the assumption that I am racist, then he was missing the point entirely and did not pay much attention to anything else I wrote.

The point is that there are other ways to deal with unpredictable and possibly aggressive animals besides just shooting them.

—Name witheld by Request