Officer Suspended for Leaving Police Dog To Die in Hot Car

Even their own pooches aren't safe

A Woodstock Police officer will be suspended and receive a $6,000 pay cut after his K-9 partner was left in a patrol car in June and died of a heat stroke.

Officer Chad Berry, a nine-year veteran of the Woodstock Police Department, will be suspended for 10 days without pay and has been removed from the department's K-9 program, costing him $6,000 a year in special duty pay, Sgt. Randy Milligan, spokesman for the police department, said Friday.

Berry found his 3-year-old K-9 partner, Spartacus, dead in his patrol car outside his home in Jasper on June 17, and both the Woodstock Police Department and the Pickens County Sheriff's Office began investigations into the death.