Mother unhappy about police chief decapitating her young son's pet chicken

A Minnesota woman has filed a formal complaint against the Atwater Police Chief for trespassing on her property and killing her young son’s pet chicken, leaving the hen’s decapitated head just feet from the backyard chicken coop. Ashley Turnbull said she knows she violated the city’s ordinance that prohibits fowl and acknowledges she was told Aug. 7 by police to remove the three chickens and two ducks. But she said Police Chief Trevor Berger went too far when he came onto her property about a week later, when nobody was home, and clubbed, killed and decapitated a small red hen, which belonged to her five-year-old son, Phoenix, with a shovel. “The chicken was like a puppy dog to my son,” said Turnbull. “You wouldn’t do that to a puppy.”

Berger said he was simply enforcing the city ordinance that has been on the books since 1960 and was responding to a “frustrated’ neighbour’s repeated complaints, including a report on Aug. 16 that one of Turnbull’s chickens was running loose in the residential area near the elementary school. “I’m sorry it had to happen that way,” said Berger, adding that he didn’t intend to leave the severed chicken head in the yard to send a message to the homeowners. Berger said he thought the head was still attached to the chicken when he carried the carcass away. Berger said killing the chicken was justified. “It’s against city ordinance for a chicken to be in the city and running around in people’s yards,” he said.
Turnbull said Berger didn’t handle the situation professionally. “I still feel he owes my son an apology and he owes us a chicken, said Turnbull, who filed a written complaint with the Atwater Police Commissioner on Aug. 20. Berger said when he got the call on Aug. 16, he saw the chicken in a yard next to Turnbull’s house. He said he tried for 10-15 minutes to catch the chicken or chase it back into the pen. “I feel like I made a good effort to get it back in,” he said. But when the other two chickens and two ducks in the fenced pen started to get out, Berger said he closed the door that he’d opened, grabbed a shovel leaning against Turnbull’s garage and “dispatched” the chicken. Since there were children playing in the adjacent yard, Berger said he didn’t want to use his gun to kill the chicken and the shovel was the “safest way to dispatch it.”

When asked why it was necessary to kill the young chicken instead of letting it be, Berger said the family was “not supposed to have them in the first place” and that he wanted to give the aggrieved neighbour “some results.” It was the same process he would use if there was a report of a skunk, he said. “I guess I don’t regret it, because it’s like taking care of any rodent in town,” he said. Turnbull said she doesn’t understand that logic. “I couldn’t perceive a chicken being a threat to anybody,” she said. Turnbull’s neighbour, Jason Shoutz, said he saw Berger walk up to the chicken by the coop and swing the shovel “up and down.” His young daughter was in the yard at the time and saw the officer kill the chicken. Berger said he left no note on the door and although he intended to initiate contact the family after killing the chicken, he did not. Turnbull has not yet heard a response, but the issue is expected to be addressed on Wednesday during the Atwater City Council meeting when, ironically, Berger said he intends to present a proposed ordinance to allow chickens in the city, that the council asked him to prepare earlier this year.