Via the Daily Mail, A man was arrested for filming the police and they shot his dog. Of course they did.
What I find interesting about this (I suppose "interesting" isn't the proper word, so let's start over).
Why I bothered to comment on this is that I noticed the item first on memorandum, and the bloggers commenting on it.
Vox Popoli, who is generally right wing and no friend to black people, from what I've seen on his blog, wants to shoot the cops.
Alan Colmes "Liberaland" doesn't want to go that far, but obviously doesn't approve.
Taylor Marsh, a liberal commetator, likewise is upset.
Joe Gandleman at the Moderate Voice, is disgusted.
Andrew Sullivan is using my favorite term.
The LA Times all but says the cops are out to get the guy.
Gawker even notices.
A commenter at Vox Popoli's site thinks we are all dogs now.
They all know something's wrong.
Bad training, I think. Discharging the pistol into a hard surface like pavement and concrete at that range was more dangerous -- to the police themselves, I mean -- than the dog was. Take into account all the bystanders and the probability of ricochets, and it sounds like some retraining is needed all around. There's a reason we spend so much taxpayer money on nonlethal alternative weapons for the police.
ReplyDeleteHere is the perfect time to whip out those non-lethal aids, not for the dogs sake but for your backstop, as Grim mentioned. Overpenetration is certainly a possibility at that range, though if the officer is using expanding ammunition that could be minimized. Of course, with the tazer you only get one shot, and you could miss... Mace might make the dog more mad, but if my nose was 100 times more sensitive than it is now and I got maced I would go somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteWell of course something's wrong.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, consider why this made the news at all. It doesn't happen all the time, and people are justly outraged.
It's news that someone, somewhere, did something that they shouldn't have done. The idea that police aren't human and don't have scumbags, people who overreact, people who cover up/excuse wrongdoing, etc. in their ranks is so naive that I'm not sure what to say about it.
I could cite a gazillion examples of people in the military doing similarly bad things, often involving abusing their authority. So, does this mean there's 'something wrong with the military'? Should we just shoot people who screw up on sight (as the always reasonable Vox proposes)?
What point should we take from this, Eric? This is a serious question, not intended to harass or annoy. What does it mean that A Bad Thing Happened involving police officers?
What does this story prove?
What should our response be?
Normally I would lambast the police, as I am sick of the encroaching police state.
ReplyDeleteBut amazingly, in this particular case, shooting the dog looks like a defensible act. No pun intended.
From the report, the cops asked the guy to turn his car audio down as it was very loud,and interfering with their investigation of an armed robbery. The dog escaped the car and ran at the cops. This was not a forced entry "let's shoot the dog first " type event, and the photo's clearly show the dog (a large Rottweiler" jumping at the cop.
The news portrayed this as "the man's dog ran over to him"-well, yes, but to give him a big lick or to bite the hell out of the cops?
I certainly don't think it's a black and white case, and I don't think the man whose dog was shot acted in a responsible way- he seemed to invite the conflict, and given that he has a case pending against that Police department, he may well have been pushing things a little to 'prove his point' in the other case. Clearly, the cops, with rifles in hand (or carbines?), were in the midst of what they considered a serious situation, and not getting in their way would seem like the prudent course of action. On the other hand, you'd think the cops would have had better things to do if it was that serious, than bother with this guy, and in the end, create this much distraction from the primary mission.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it was simply videoing the police that precipitated the events either (as the headline and the post title both declare), as we watched the event on video shot by another bystander who was apparently not arrested.
This is one of those situations where you had multiple bad decisions from multiple people and the result was a bad one, where in this case a dog gets shot needlessly. I do agree that non-lethal or even taking a bite would have been the preferable course of action to shooting the dog at that moment, though.
I'd have to agree with Cass that this alone isn't convincing me that we live in a police state or are headed that way soon. I have however, become more concerned about it over the years, but I'm just not seeing it as something that's a manifest danger - yet.
Sorry Cass and Doug, you need to get your heads out of the sand. This isn't a case of 'a few bad apples'.
ReplyDeleteIt is institutionalized, And you all just haven't run afoul of it yet.
When stuff like this is going on:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/03/59061.htm
We all got reason to worry.