Man in Sicily trained his dog to illegally dump rubbish, say police

City of Catania calls ruse to avoid CCTV cameras installed to stop fly-tipping ‘as cunning as it is doubly wrong’

A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump bags of rubbish by the roadside in an attempt to evade surveillance cameras installed to combat fly-tipping, municipal police have said.

The episode was detailed in a post on the city of Catania’s official Facebook page. Accompanying a video of the dog was a remark from the police that “inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility”.

The footage shows a small dog trotting along Via Pulacara in Catania’s San Giorgio district with a bag of rubbish in its mouth before dropping it neatly at the roadside.

“The environmental unit of Catania’s municipal police,” a statement posted on the Facebook page reads, “has released two videos recorded by surveillance cameras in which a dog is seen depositing a bag of waste in the street.”