When I was a kid, real men didn’t shoot people’s family dog

Regular commenter Frank just emailed me about the latest in what has become all too standard police practice in America.

Shooting the family dog.

On Saturday afternoon, a passerby called 911 around 4:30 to report a domestic disturbance.

What the responding officer, APD Officer Thomas Griffin, didn’t know when he arrived minutes later is that the 911 caller mistakenly gave the wrong address.

Upon arrival, the first person Officer Griffin encountered was Michael Paxton and his blue heeler, named Cisco.

Austin police confirmed Monday that Officer Griffin got out of his patrol car with his weapon drawn.

In audio captured on Officer Griffin’s dashboard camera, you can hear the officer give Paxton commands to put his hands up and to control his dog. Austin police removed a few seconds of the tape where Griffin fatally shoots the dog.

“Why didn’t you get your dog when I told you to get your dog?” questioned Officer Griffin.

I didn’t know! You just came around the corner and told me to put my hands up. What am I supposed to do?” replied Paxton.

Both via Radley Balko, who also links yet another one.

In answer to the question “What am I supposed to do,” I honestly don’t know. It is ugly and tedious to read about these stories, but as a dog lover I am shocked every time, because I often wonder how I might protect Coco against such callused police conduct.  I don’t know, I suppose if I grabbed her and refused to let go, they might shoot us both.

But here’s the thing. I’m old enough to remember when things weren’t this way. Police behaved not only as human beings, but they were real men. I may be showing my age, so forgive me if that sounds too old-fashioned, but what I mean is that the cops when I was a kid (in the late 50s-early 60s, and well into the 70s) were mostly what you’d call knockaround guys. World War II/Korean War veterans, they had seen things a lot tougher than a drug dealer, a couple having a quarrel, or a teenager with his pet dog. Those kids of men could wade into possibly dangerous situations and defuse them, often by talking sense to the fools who were carried away or intoxicated. This shoot-the-first-dog-you-see-at-the drop of a hat stuff just didn’t happen. Certainly not as it does now. The cops today act like robots. Automatons. Apparatchiks. Like the TSA on steroids with zero common sense, and the full panoply of state power behind them. It’s almost as if the system is designed to allow anyone — even the puniest physical coward — to be a cop.

I hate to sound like a sexist bigot, but when I was a kid, real men didn’t go around shooting the family dog. They didn’t have SWAT Teams either, and it wasn’t as if they didn’t understand lethal military force; the guys I’m talking about fought the Nazis and liberated places like Dachau. They fought hand to hand against the Japanese in places like Iwo Jima. They would have been sickened by the idea of deploying that kind of force against Americans who were accused of selling dope or copying DVDs.

Something went wrong, and I don’t know what.


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3 responses to “When I was a kid, real men didn’t shoot people’s family dog”

  1. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    The cops today act like robots. Automatons. Apparatchiks.

    Yes. Is this what it’s like as a country slides into totalitarianism?

    In a thoughtful piece by Daniel Greenfield on the Zimmerman affair, which applies here as well, he compares what is going on to a Kafka nightmare:

    The original title of “The Trial” was “The Process” and we are always in the middle of a process. The process begins before we are born and ends only when our bodies and estates are disposed of to the complete satisfaction of the system. The point of Kafka’s book was not whether the defendant was innocent or guilty. The point of the process was the process. The purpose of the trial was the trial.

    We are all on trial under the system. That is the nightmare that Kafka anticipated. It is a reality that was already taking hold in the Soviet Union even while he was writing. The purpose of the trial is the absolute power of the system and its ability to snatch up anyone, examine them and then dispose of them.
    http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/04/we-are-all-george-zimmerman.html

    And then dispose of them.

    Our pets are extensions of ourselves. My dog is like a child. Shooting him for no reason would amount to senseless murder. It would be a cowardly act with only one purpose – to underline the absolute, random, and arbitrary power of the state.

    The ABC News story gives the reaction of the bewildered victim, Michael Paxton:

    “He [the cop] had a Taser. He had pepper spray. I don’t understand why, in broad daylight, he pulled a gun on me. I wasn’t running. I wasn’t hiding,”

    “I was in shock for probably almost 24 hours. I wasn’t crying at that point, but when I picked my dog up out of the driveway, I lost it,” Paxton said, choking up. “He’s not a vicious dog. He was a good boy. He was a real good boy.”

  2. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    Savages.