For some time, I have been lamenting the fact that no matter what the police state apparatchiks do, or how publicly they do it, there never seems to be an available remedy for the victims.
This story of a dog shot in its own yard — by officers who ignored a BEWARE OF DOG sign on the gate, and ignored the residents’ pleas to first allow them to secure the dog inside the house — is a another typical example, with another typical recitation that dog killing is standard police state practice:
Family members say they haven’t gotten so much as an apology from the police.
“I’m hurt that they would do this to my pet, but at the same time I’m angry because they act like they don’t even care. They didn’t apologize,” Luu said through a Vietnamese.
Police are reportedly conducting an internal investigation, but Buehler maintains his cops followed “policy.”
I’m sure they did. A heartless and cruel policy, but one which is designed to enable the police state to operate with impunity.
Reason has more. After shooting the dog, the cops demanded licenses before they would allow it to go to the vet.
The family also claims police told her her dog was ok after it had been shot, and demanded licenses for all the dogs in the house before allowing the German shepherd to get treated. The family says it hasn’t even gotten an apology, and also points out there was a children’s party in a front yard across the street and several children in the home when the shooting took place.
So much for a family dog belonging to a family whose only crime was asking the police for help, and carefully warning them to let them take care of the dog.
There is only one moral lesson I can draw from this.
If you own a dog, never, NEVER call the police. Better to get a gun and if you have religion, pray.
But even religion may not help your dog, as a 52 year old minister in Hawthorne, California learned a few days ago when his dog was brutally shot to death.
Leon Rosby arrived at 137th Street and Jefferson Avenue in Hawthorne on Sunday evening to videotape a police standoff. He brought along his 2-year-old Rottweiler, Max.
He put the dog on a leash and began filming. Hawthorne police deemed Rosby’s actions interference and placed him under arrest. By this point, Max was in the backseat of Rosby’s car, but the arrest upset him. He began barking, jumped out of the car and lunged at officers.
One of the officers drew a gun and fired four times. Dozens of residents watched the shooting, with some shrieking and moaning. Handcuffed, Rosby looked away in horror.
The incident Sunday was caught on tape and went viral on the Internet this week, sparking outrage and even drawing threats directed at the Hawthorne Police Department.
Some community leaders are calling for an investigation into the officers’ actions, and Rosby said he still can’t believe what happened.
“I’ve never seen someone that close to me get killed like that,” Rosby, 52, said in an interview.
Rosby, an ordained minister now working as a licensed contractor, said he was filming the crime scene to protect the civil rights of those under investigation by police. When officers questioned him, he said, he asserted his right to record.
Hawthorne police Lt. Scott Swain said in a statement that Rosby was walking too close to law enforcement officers with Max, who weighed 80 pounds. The music coming from his car added to the distraction, authorities said, and made a “dangerous situation” at the crime scene.
In an interview, Swain would not pass judgment on the shooting.
“I’m not saying it’s justified, but even when it’s justified, there are some learning points,” he said. “Could we have done anything different? We’ll look at all those facts.”
Oh, I’m sure the bastards police state damage control apparatchiks will look at all the facts, and exonerate the officers, because that is what they are paid to do.
The video of the incident has gone viral, and anyone possessed of common sense can see what happened. The cops simply did not like being filmed by the minister (who may well have been known to them as a local activist), they retaliated, and the dog tried to help out his master as any dog would under such circumstances.
Watch it if you can stand it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9fCK6Y0bu4
The cops had no right to detain the man for filming them (which is legal, even when done deliberately by activists like this guy), much less grapple with him as they did, and they did not need to shoot the dog, because it was not attacking them, and did not even try to bite them but only trying to go to his master.
As far as I am concerned, that dog was a hero killed in the line of duty by fascist scum. I know it isn’t nice to refer to police officers that way, but again, I despair of any solution to the problem and I am very frustrated.
The only “remedy” (if it is in fact a remedy) seems to be found on YouTube.
No wonder they don’t want to be filmed.
Here’s another YouTube video of the man crying over his dead dog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFCUIYkP9Wk
As to the possible psychological motivations behind these dog shootings, I suspect that police may be frustrated with their jobs. Who wouldn’t be? They are charged with enforcing thousands of laws which they have to know make every last citizen a criminal of one sort or another. They are armed to the teeth with the latest in military gear and weaponry, and they know that increasingly, the citizenry view them with distrust and hatred, so it is probably mutual. What kind of person would deliberately seek such employment under these circumstances? Moreover, they consider themselves “soldiers” and “warriors.” It is not surprising, then, that they would consider the criminal citizenry (which by definition is all of us) to be the enemy. And even though they are supposed to be waging war against the enemy, this country still has vestiges of being the United States of America, which means that shooting ordinary citizens can make for a lot of paperwork and maybe even hearings and lawsuits. A very frustrating situation for guys who want to be gung-ho warriors. So…. I’m thinking that they may regard dogs as easy targets. After all, dogs are unarmed, and even if they survive shootings, they are unable to talk so they cannot ever testify as witnesses. And because dogs are domesticated animals, they really are easy targets, even nasty ones. Ask anyone who deals with them for a living. They almost never have to use deadly force:
“They killed a dog unnecessarily,” said D Black, Humane Society director. “This was not an aggressive dog. I’m not a large woman, I handled much larger dogs at the end of catch poles by myself, and I was never in a situation where I couldn’t control one.”
“I’ve picked up thousands of dogs in my career,” said Theodore Hoover, a state Agriculture Department dog law officer covering Cambria County. “I never had to shoot one yet, and I’ve had some nasty ones.”
In the two cases discussed in this post, the police certainly did not have to shoot the dogs. I think police just considered the dogs to be inconvenient and in their way, and didn’t want to call animal control. I suspect they just wanted a chance to discharge their weapons at an easy target.
If you think about the kind of person who would seek employment consisting of waging a de facto war against the public, such a mindset kind of goes with the turf.
Perhaps society should consider calling off the war.
Comments
15 responses to “When police become warriors, family pets become casualties”
Police kill something you love as a lesson. It would be interesting to see when dogs are killed. Is their a correlation to when police are arresting, raiding, etc. but have little hope of prosecution?
As they say, you might beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride….or these days having a beloved family member gunned down right in front of you.
I am a frequent international traveler, my observations of USA
police is;
1. Most USA forces are quite good.
2. Some areas of USA have very visible heavily armed police forces.
As in police states a heavily armed visible police force produces more feeling of threat and intimidation, than of security.
Guns at the ready , shoot first, questions and answers later.
It will happen. Somebody will revenge kill several cops after their dog is executed. I’m shocked it hasn’t happened already.
They are armed to the teeth with the latest in military gear and weaponry
Those Hawthorne PD officers were just wearing normal cop outfits and using standard civilian handguns, though.
They weren’t a SWAT team, so that analysis can’t be very effective on them (while it might well work on a SWAT team).
Whatever their problem is, it’s not military gear and weaponry.
This constantly happening is one reason I just do not trust the cops anymore. No restraints on cops is dangerous.
I see the police dept in my home city has been hiring these young kids that are barely learning how to shave. I had one pull me over for going just 5 mph over the speed limit and this little young punk was sneering and yelling at me like he was friggin’ king bossman. I can commend these kids that join the military and their noble sacrifice in performing duties overseas. But these kids return from the battlefield and invariably get jobs in law enforcement because of their military background. Problem is they carry with them the same attitude and tactics that were appropriate for the battlefield but are now employing them here on us citizens. These young punk ass cops need to understand that the badge on their chest doesn’t obviate the need to respect you elders and they certainly need to remember that as a government official they work to serve the citizen taxpayer, not the other way around.
The problem is these “police officers” are sociopaths.
Don’t forget the racial component. This wasn’t just police shooting a random citizen’s dog. There’s context here.
I don’t know the area, but it looks like the police were operating in a black neighborhood. I’m sure there’s a lot of bad history between the police force (and city government in general) and the population there, with nasty stuff happening on both sides. I’m sure the prevalence of antagonistic attitudes has ratcheted up on both sides.
This activist waded into the middle of that fight and got burned. I don’t mean to minimize the legal questions here, but shooting dogs is not the central problem. I’ll bet Simon will be along presently to fill us in on what that is.
Let’s call dog-killings by cops what it is: preemptive extra-judicial punishment.
Simple really, you shoot my Dog, I shoot you, this is not a threat, it’s a WARNING NSA snoops,
Bob
You have a shortend version of the video. Leon was driving by, saw the stand off, pulled over behind them,
got out to film with his dog, left the music blareing. When the cops approached he put the dog in the car but did not tie the leash or raise the windows.
When he got cuffed the dog came out came at the cops and got killed.
Cops do this crap all the time but this one was Leon fault.
“Cops do this crap all the time but this one was Leon fault.”
IF, as it certainly appears to this citizen, the cops made a FALSE ARREST, then it is THEIR FAULT. They had NO legitimate reason to place him under arrest. (Yes, cuffing = arrest.)
When (I don’t think it’s “if” anymore) the citizenry gets fed up with gov’t employees out of control, it is going to get very ugly, very fast.
When the police show up they “secure the scene” if you wind up in cuffs while they are doing that you are being “detained” for the investigation. They tell you when you’re under arrest.
Anyone who stands up to them will be the bad guy, americans
Only care about feeling “safe”.
Push for civilian oversight boards for police. I work with an ex-cop and like others, he’s an ex-football jock, with a domineering personality. He’s telling stories all of the time about provoking a fist fight with suspects or making claims in reports that justify his actions after the fact.
It seems all but the very worst police behavior with the worst possible outcomes are just investigated by the cop’s co-workers and then minimized. Glenn Reynolds makes a good point about removing the protection from liability for officers more often, mast especially in botched no-knock raids.
Look at this investigation of FBI shootings over 20 years in the NYT.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/p2r82jt