This devastating photo tells the tragic story of a family dog, shot dead by a police officer as he pursued a robbery suspect on Sunday.

Monkey got caught up in the chaos of a foot pursuit along Hodges Street in Lake Charles, Louisiana as officers chased teens believed to have beaten a man in a mall parking lot before stealing his car which they then abandoned.

The dog was in a back yard on the street when she heard the commotion and ran out through an open gate.

One of the officers involved in the chase apparently thought that Monkey was attacking and opened fired on her.

Monkey’s distress owner, Delores Crochet, witnessed one of the shots being fired and said that neighbours told her of the three others.

‘He was shooting down like this,’ Crochet told kplctv.com, gesturing toward the ground.

‘Monkey wasn’t jumping on him or anything. Four times he shot and the bullet went in. She came and met me, walked over there and she laid down and that’s where she died.’

The heartbreaking photograph of Crochet sitting beside the slain dog was posted on social media websites and a petition has been launched calling for action to be taken against the officer who killed her.

Crochet’s son, Chris, told the news site there must have been an alternative to shooting her.

‘She had not ripped his clothes, she had not tried to bite him,’ he said, ‘and he shot her instead of trying to use pepper spray or some non lethal force.’

Deputy Lake Charles Police Chief Mark Kraus visited the family home to investigate what happened.

‘When the suspect left the gate open the owner’s dog came out of that opening, saw the policeman running through his yard and approached the policeman,’ he said.

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• Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request

• Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center - a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.

They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’

A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual ‘is a starting point, not the endgame’ in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.

However the agency admitted that the language used was vague and in need of updating.

Spokesman Matthew Chandler told website: ‘To ensure clarity, as part of … routine compliance review, DHS will review the language contained in all materials to clearly and accurately convey the parameters and intention of the program.’

Here is the list of words:

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