Or We’ll Shoot Your Dog

But It doesn’t violate policy.

John Hamilton, an associate professor of criminal justice administration at Park University and a retired Major with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department, told the news station that the officers’ threats may not be illegal, though they’re inappropriate and it’s possible they violate department policy. He also pointed to the matter of appearances, saying that such behavior “makes it tenuous when you appear in front of the court in a case like that.”

But Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School, isn’t convinced that it’s legal to threaten to shoot people’s dogs and otherwise humiliate them if they insist on the protections of the Fourth Amendment. “It would in my view be a little more than inappropriate and could constitute a crime. While it could be a tough case on this evidence, one possibility would be a criminal threat.”

Turley points (accidentally, I think) to a Kansas statute* regarding “criminal threat.” But Missouri has a statute that defines a “credible threat…against the life of, or a threat to cause physical injury to, or the kidnapping of, the person, the person’s family, or the person’s household members or domestic animals or livestock” as aggravated stalking and might fit the bill in this situation. However, that law explicitly exempts law enforcement officers “conducting investigations of violation of federal, state, county, or municipal law,” which is more than a little disturbing.

Really? It’s OK to threaten people’s lives, their family, and their pets if you’re a cop?

It is very difficult for police to violate policy. Especially when exempted from said policies and laws. They are not held to as high a standard as ordinary citizens. Which is why ordinary citizens hold them in such low regard. Police states are like that.