Goshen Police Use Treats to Rescue Dog Stranded on Rooftop

The call that sent Goshen officers to a residential rooftop just after 2:45 p.m. on April 1 was logged as a suspicious individual, the kind of dispatch that pulls patrol resources off the street immediately. The subject turned out to be a very large dog.

That single detail captures something essential about how the Town of Goshen Police Department spends its time. Research published by the federal Office of Justice Programs estimates that 70 to 80 percent of all calls police answer are neither criminal nor directly related to law enforcement, a reality every shift in a small department like Goshen's reflects.

Officers arrived to find the dog pacing the roofline ridge and barking at passing traffic. It had pushed through a window screen to get outside, and it was not interested in coming down on command. Verbal orders failed. "A secondary strategy involving treats was deployed," the department later wrote on Facebook, and after what it called a "brief standoff," the dog surrendered without incident and was brought back inside safely.

Getting to that point required an extra step that underscores how even low-stakes animal calls consume patrol time: the homeowner was more than an hour away. Officers had to reach them by phone and obtain permission to enter before the rescue could proceed, extending the response window and keeping at least one unit off general patrol.

Officer Figueroa, one of the responding officers on scene, faced a separate complication. While the dog occupied attention at the roof, a bird flew in through the same unscreened window and briefly "ransacked the house and harassed" Figueroa, according to the department's account, before exiting on its own.

Goshen PD handled the call entirely with patrol resources, without calling for animal control or fire department assistance. The department did not issue a formal policy statement on when animal emergencies trigger inter-agency support, but the April 1 rescue proceeded from initial dispatch through resolution within patrol.

The incident fell on the same afternoon officers would otherwise have been running standard road patrol in a township that covers roughly 56 square miles. Every minute at the roofline was a minute not spent on that coverage.

The department addressed the practical question directly in its closing post: "Residents are reminded to secure window screens and monitor pets exhibiting (an) unusual desire to rule the world from above." Before placing a 911 call for an animal that is stable and not in immediate danger, Orange County Animal Control, reachable through the county's non-emergency line, handles situations where no person or property is at imminent risk, freeing patrol officers for higher-priority calls. The entire April 1 episode traces back to one failed window screen.