Before getting into the story, it should be noted that a police officer can never make you put yourself in danger – but the cop in this story did not force the woman to get into the car. Officer Vincent Kreischer simply suggested that the owner experience the temperatures she had made her dog endure.
Of course, that’s not what Shelly Nicholas, the woman in this video, says.
It all started on a hot day in 2015 in the aptly named Truth or Consequences, New Mexico when Nicholas left her dog in the car with the windows up while she went grocery shopping.
She hadn’t even bothered to crack a window for her animal.
When she came out, Officer Vincent Kreischer was waiting for her and he wasn’t happy with how she had treated her pet.
During his patrol, he noticed the dog panting inside the hot car and he stuck around to have a word with her and write her a ticket.
When Nicholas came out of the store, she wasn’t only not sorry for what she did, she blew off the officer’s concerns, even laughing at him.
We often say we don’t deserve dogs – but some people REALLY don’t.
After shrugging off her dangerous actions – she said it was no big deal and she was only in the store for 10 minutes.
Kreischer, an animal lover, was outraged and suggested she get into the car to see just how hot it was.
That’s when she got angry.
Eventually, Nicholas would claim the officer was abusive and forced her and her family into a hot car, but luckily there was body camera footage.
And it showed that Nicholas lied.
During their conversation, Kreischer tried to drive home the seriousness of what she had done, getting out a chart to estimate the temperature inside her car based on the weather and how long the windows had been up.
His estimate? 114 degrees.
The cop wrote her a ticket.
It is illegal in New Mexico to leave an animal in a car unattended – and asked her to wait in the hot vehicle while he did so.
“You can wait in the truck and close the door you know, since it’s not that hot,” he said.
Of course, she was belligerent about the possibility of sitting in there without the air conditioning – precisely what Kreischer was trying to tell her was the problem with leaving her dog in there.
Nicholas decided she had been humiliated by the encounter and wanted to get back at the officer.
That’s when she made another mistake – she reported him to his superiors.
However, Kreischer never “enforced” the punishment – he suggested she sit in the car, but didn’t force her to do it. Of course, to be fair, when a police officer “suggests” something, it does have the tinge of an order to it.
But when she filed her complaint, she added on a little extra, saying he had forced her boyfriend and young child to sit locked up in the car.
It read in part:
“Office Kreischer approached me and ordered that we enter the vehicle, close all doors, roll up all the windows and sit there while he finished his paperwork without turning on the engine or AC.”
The officer’s body camera footage showed that he never forced her to sit in the car and that there was no family inside the car with her.
Kreischer was vindicated while Nicholas was shown to be a liar.
Of course, she had no comment on the matter, saying she was busy taking a test for school to talk to the local news station she herself had contacted.
But Officer Kreischer was happy to talk to them, calling her behavior “callous” throughout their 12-minute encounter.
We still don’t know if Nicholas became a better dog owner after that or learned any lesson about her behavior and the consequences of acting so entitled, but she did have to deal with a misdemeanor animal cruelty citation.
“Cruelty to animals occurs when person negligently mistreats, injures, kills without lawful justification or torments an animal or abandons or fails to provide necessary sustenance to an animal under that person’s custody or control.”
We’d say that describes her actions pretty well.
Click ‘play’ on the video below to see the footage for yourself.
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