OAKLAND — A young male deer roaming the streets in an urban East Oakland neighborhood Saturday morning was a startling sight, but residents soon became even more perplexed when police officers shot and killed the animal.
The incident was caught on video and has gone viral on the Internet, stirring up concern from animal lovers. Oakland police have launched an investigation into the shooting.
“I was in tears after it happened,” said Kim McLemore, who lives in the 1700 block of 90th Avenue. The deer had run through McLemore’s carport and jumped a fence into the yard of a rental unit behind her home. She said she spoke with the officers who eventually shot the animal.
“The poor thing just looked so lost,” she said. “It was so out of its environment. I kept saying, ‘Don’t kill it. You don’t need to kill it.’ It was not called for. He wasn’t attacking anyone. He was just scared, and he was cornered back there. They could have waited for wildlife people, or people from the zoo to come and get it.”
Police officials are also questioning the shooting of the deer.
“I’m unhappy with the results of this incident,” Oakland police Chief Anthony Batts said in a statement Tuesday. “I do not like what I saw (in the video). We are reviewing our policies and our procedures surrounding this incident to ensure that something like this does not happen again. I understand the importance of life and am working toward implementing strategies that will result in humane outcomes in our future contacts with wildlife.”
Joel Parrott, executive director of the Oakland Zoo, said the zoo’s veterinary experts would certainly have been willing to help out had they been notified and available.
“In the future, we would be more than happy to help OPD on a case-by-case basis with an exceptional circumstance like this,” Parrott said.
Deer are abundant in the hills right now, Parrott said, and sometimes explore beyond their habitats.
“They can get a little lost, or sometimes just explore too far and get deeper into the city than they meant to,” he said. “Another factor is that they’re getting more acclimated to people in an urban environment and not as wary as they might once have been.”
Police contacted the state Department of Fish & Game during the incident, but the warden covering the area was more than 30 minutes away, said Fish & Game spokesman Kyle Orr, and the officers thought they had to act sooner than that.
The deer was first spotted about 10:30 a.m. by Oakland Housing Authority officers, who then called Oakland police and animal control, said Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason. Housing Authority officers were following the deer as it roamed through the streets when Oakland police arrived.
“All the kids in the neighborhood came out to see a deer on city streets,” McLemore said. “But by this time, the deer was in the backyard and couldn’t get out. The gate was closed and was cornered back there.
“The police kept everyone out of there,” she said. “They evacuated the apartment building behind that unit. And my sister took my kids down the street. And then they shot at it at least six times. Pop pop. No kids saw it, and then the way the cars were, they couldn’t have seen it when they brought it out. But there are still bullet fragments in the fence.”
Neighbors questioned why animal control officers, who had tranquilizer guns, did not use them. But police said those officers were not trained to use the specialized guns.
“Our officers and even animal control officers are not equipped to deal with wildlife of that nature,” Thomason said. “But I don’t know why they have (tranquilizer guns) if they don’t know how to use them. That’s all part of our investigation.”
The director of Oakland Animal Services was not available to comment Tuesday. Thomason said she was meeting with wildlife experts to better address such a situation in the future.
Parrott said tranquilizer guns are not something that can be mastered by merely taking a training course.
“It really comes down to experience over time,” he said. “The drugs are extremely potent and can be very dangerous to handle.”
