On Christmas Day, Hopedale police officers responded to reports of a raccoon that was acting erratically in a residential neighborhood.
The officers decided the raccoon might be rabid, and while families watched — including children — the officers used their police vehicle to run over the animal several times, eventually crushing it to death.
The incident kicked up a firestorm on social media, with many residents criticizing the police for a gruesome display that they deemed cruel, unnecessary and inhumane.
Jane Newhouse, founder of Newhouse Wildlife Rescue, a Chelmsford-based non-profit rescue and rehabilitation service with more than 440,000 followers on Facebook, heard from both sides after the incident.
“People are angry — and understandably,” Newhouse said. “Even some police officers I’ve talked to in different towns were pretty horrified to hear about it. There have been some police officers that have reached out to me, just expressing that they do find themselves in really tough situations where they don’t really know what to do. Their job is to protect the public, but they’re not really sure how to go about it. There’s a gap there.”
Newhouse wants to help fill that education gap.
A licensed wildlife rehabilitator for nine years, Newhouse is reaching out to local police departments, offering to collaborate and instruct officers on how to handle unruly animals.
The decision to kill an animal should be an informed one, she said.
“The public wants to know all the other options that are available,” Newhouse said. “I think what the public struggles with is police officers deciding that an animal needs to be euthanized without any professional assessment of the situation. What we’re trying to do is make police aware of what options are available to them and try to foster more relationships between them and rehabbers and local vets, just so these situations aren’t happening.”
Christine Gualtieri, an animal control officer for the towns of Billerica and Tewksbury, said she had a visceral reaction to hearing about the raccoon in Hopedale.
“When you see something like that, at first I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” Gualtieri said. “You hate to be a Monday morning quarterback, but me, as an animal control officer, my first instinct would be, ‘Wow, that was definitely preventable.’”
Even when euthanasia is deemed to be the most humane option, there are proper ways to carry it out and protocol that must be followed. Too often, Newhouse said, police are unaware of how to follow those procedures.
Newhouse said the last thing police would want to do with a rabid animal is run it over, as protocol calls for the brain to be preserved and tested in any instances where rabies is suspected because the state maintains a database of the disease.
Gualtieri said a more informed decision-making process would help eliminate those oversights.
“Regardless of if an animal needs to be euthanized, there are humane ways of doing it,” Gualtieri said. “My question with the raccoon being run over is, what was the urgency?”
Gualtieri has been in animal control for 14 years and said police officers often contact her office, but noted it can be difficult even for an experienced wildlife expert to discern when an animal is acting erratically because it’s rabid and needs to be put down. Unusual behavior can often be attributed to environmental or circumstantial conditions for an otherwise healthy animal.
Gualtieri said that a raccoon behaving strangely could be reacting to freezing cold weather, or it could be a mother that has recently given birth and is out foraging for extra food during a time of day that is uncomfortable for a nocturnal animal.
Police officers are not expertly trained to know the difference, Gualtieri said, and should be quick to bring in outside assistance from wildlife personnel.
“I really think education is the key,” Gualtieri said. “The police are great and they do rely on us a lot. We don’t want them to be afraid to just call and ask. I think they’re learning, too, that just because something is out (and acting in an unusual manner) doesn’t mean that it’s sick.”
Newhouse said some police departments have taken her up on her offer to educate.
“We’ve set up meetings with a few police officers and police chiefs,” she said. “We’re trying to learn where they feel like they could use the help, the situations they’re in. We’re hoping to do some face-to-face education with the ones that want us to come in.”
The decision to run over the raccoon in Hopedale was not an isolated incident. In 2024, Springfield’s top fire official used his government-issued vehicle to run over a raccoon he believed to be rabid.
Springfield Fire Commissioner Bernard J. Calvi came under intense criticism from the city council for killing the raccoon. Calvi was eventually cleared of wrongdoing and no criminal charges were filed against him, but an investigation into the handling of the incident revealed a breakdown in the city’s plan for dealing with rabid animals.
Newhouse emphasized she is not trying to work against or undermine the police, only augment their handling of wildlife situations, so incidents like the killing of the raccoon in Hopedale can be avoided.
“This can be a positive collaboration,” she said.
The Hopedale Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
