A 35-second video circulating on social media appears to show a uniformed Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer kicking his own K9 twice with his right leg or foot as the dog struggled and barked while he handled it. The footage, which shows the officer walking the dog toward the front of a police vehicle as a woman stands nearby with her hands up, was captured near Tropicana Avenue and Boulder Highway on August 11.
The clip was first posted by Las Vegas Emergency Incidents, a page known by the acronym LVEI, on its Facebook page, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. LVEI later posted a zoomed-in version of the video on Wednesday, forwarded the footage to Metro, and requested that the department investigate the officer's actions, the paper reported.
The original post has drawn more than 175 likes, nearly 150 comments, and has been shared more than 85 times. Facebook commenters accused the officer of mistreating the canine, with the outlet noting that one comment from a user named Brittany Rodriguez became the most-reacted response on the post, racking up 67 reactions. “@LVMPD why is that K9 officer being kicked by his handler?!” Rodriguez wrote, per the same account.
Metro Confirms Awareness, Stays Silent on Investigation
The Metropolitan Police Department told the Review-Journal it was aware of the incident depicted in the video, but the department did not answer whether police were investigating the officer's conduct. That silence leaves open one of the central questions raised by the footage: whether Metro's Internal Affairs Bureau, which handles administrative investigations into public complaints and misconduct allegations, has opened a formal review.
Nevada law draws a sharp line around mistreatment of police dogs, though the statutes are built primarily to punish outsiders who interfere with K9 units, not handlers disciplining their own animals. Under state law, it is a crime to willfully and maliciously beat, strike, taunt, torment, or interfere with a police animal or its handler while the animal is performing assigned duties. Lawmakers strengthened those protections in June 2025 through Assembly Bill 381, which amended the statute to classify intentionally disabling or killing a police animal as a Category B felony carrying one to six years in state prison, according to legislative records tracked by BillTrack50.
How Handler Discipline Differs From Public Mistreatment
Whether a strike delivered by a dog's own handler falls under those same public-facing statutes, or is instead governed by internal agency policy and training standards, remains an open question that would likely fall to Metro's own review process. Nevada's general animal cruelty law separately classifies unjustifiable beating, torturing, or injuring of any animal as a misdemeanor for a first offense within seven years, with penalties of up to six months in jail and fines up to $1,000, though repeat offenses within that window can escalate to a felony.
Handler training and operational standards for police service dog teams across Nevada are set by the Nevada Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, known as POST, which certifies evaluators and maintains uniform statewide guidelines. Comparable incidents elsewhere offer a sense of how police leadership typically responds: after a 2021 video showed a Calgary officer kicking a police dog during a containment operation, that department's executive leadership publicly said the act was unacceptable and violated standard leash-correction protocols, according to Global News. Police leaders in that case said verbal commands or leash pressure, not physical strikes, are the accepted way to correct a service dog's behavior.
Metro's K9 Unit and Recent Local Precedent
Metro's K9 section is a sizable operation, staffed by 16 police officers, three sergeants, and one lieutenant overseeing 35 working police dogs trained in suspect apprehension, explosive detection, and narcotics searches. The department has also used its canine teams for public demonstrations of discipline and technique, including hosting its annual K9 Trials in March 2025, drawing police canine teams from across North America to compete in tactical operations and handler protection.
This is not the first Clark County case in recent memory to raise questions about how law enforcement handles its working dogs. In November 2025, a Clark County School District Police officer entered a no-contest plea to misdemeanor animal confinement after his K9 partner, Marley, died inside a patrol vehicle when the officer deactivated the vehicle's heat-alarm system, a case Hoodline previously reported on. That episode intensified scrutiny of police working animal care across local agencies, a backdrop against which the newly circulated video is now drawing public attention.
For now, the core facts remain limited to what the video shows and what Metro has confirmed: an officer struck his police dog twice near Boulder Highway, the department is aware of the footage, and it has not said publicly whether any investigation, Internal Affairs review, or change in the officer's duty status has followed.
