I do appreciate a nice ad hominem; but I was attacking your argument, not its form:
Article is about severe trigger-happiness on the part of police vs. dogs, far beyond levels that safety actually requires, and you respond with an uncontroversial assertion that would only be relevant if the article were complaining that dogs are not given the same consideration as people in terms of threat assessment and appropriate levels of force(but ought to be).
Given that that isn’t the claim being made anywhere, your assertion is true but irrelevant (while picking up a dash of carelessness by using the personhood status of dogs to elide the interests of their human owners in not having their pet shot by the police…)
I understood what you are saying, it’s just that it was almost so broken as to be a non sequitor.
I think that the force used on dogs should be similar to that of the force used on humans. A taser or pepper spray will discourage a dog from continuing to attack most of the time.
That being said
pisses me off. If a police dog is attacking me, I am going to kill that dog. Period. A police animal doesn’t have the training or mental capacity to judiciously use force. Hell, most human police don’t either. It’s absolutely ridiculous that I could get slapped with a murder charge for defending myself against an unpredictable animal.
Are they just organizationally distinct from the ones that do most of the dog shooting, or is there a thin blue line for dogs as well as people?
Probably the latter. Cops seem to think that they’re the only good people on earth (which, given the numbers, is a hilarious delusion), and I imagine they’re so wrapped up in that mentality that it even applies to dogs.
Besides, the former suggests that there is a large number of good cops. I thank you for that suggestion; it’s always nice to end a Monday with a hearty laugh at a foolish thought.
Are you saying you want people to lick their own assholes and then jump at you and lick your face? Or run around yapping for no reason? Plenty of people already do that one.
The detractors obviously haven’t been keeping up the the news. Mailmen seem to have sufficient tools and training to fend off dog attacks, why police cant raise to the same level of training regarding dogs?
A lot of these “puppycides” are straight up sadistic. And they happen A LOT.
i’m glad this doc is happening. i’ve known several dogs that got killed by cops, and i know about ~10 more from friends. it’s totally a thing. maybe dogs should get their shit together and start killing cops.
Plus, mailmen face dogs more as the rule than the exception. Pretty much anywhere there’s a dog that isn’t physically restrained, the mailman gets to walk into its territory every time there’s a delivery to make.
If dogs were actually that dangerous, even a modest percentage of the time, we’d be knee deep in dead mailmen and ‘Amazon Prime’ would be a survival-horror game rather than a delivery service.
So, either all those gang-bangers who keep their vicious rotweilers on a diet of crack and gunpowder are very courteous to mailmen, don’t get many letters, or are largely mythical.
There are some circles I run in where the joke is any time you call or interact with the police or gov. “You better hide your dog.”
It’s a sad joke. I think there are legit reasons to take a dog out, some people even sic their dogs on cops. But I don’t think many cops even think twice about killing a dog. They just shoot a dog if they want to or “just to be safe” because they know they can.
I will tell my tangentially related story because it shows the “other side.”
My good and faithful friend Michael Cho was shot down by over-anxious and possibly drunk police in the middle of the day. They had a k-9 “unit” in the car but claimed that they did not release him to help subdue Michael because they were afraid the dog would be caught in crossfire (from their guns, Michael was not armed or suspected of being armed.) There was much testimony about how the officer considered the dog a member of his family and a partner in crime fighting.
Both officers were, IMO, liars. The older one obviously stumbled and his gun went off so both of them emptied their guns into Michael before thinking about it. Easier to explain a dead guy than have a witness.
It really should be a basic principal that one should avoid the use of violence unless it is absolutely necessary, and minimize the force used when it is necessary. Pre-emptively shooting a non-threatening dog is unnecessary. As Doctorow pointed out, no police officer has been killed by a dog in 50 years. A large, angry dog can hurt a person badly, but a police officer, wearing boots, carrying a night stick and pepper spray, and nearly always in the company of at least one other police officer who is similarly equipped, has plenty of ways to fight off a vicious dog, short of shooting it to death.
“Slippery slope” is over-used, but I think it’s applicable here. That is, there are disturbing trends in police procedures, in which police are increasingly heavily armed, and increasingly prone to violence.
I have some sympathy for this idea, having grown up around people who emphatically preferred pets to human companionship, which I came to see as deeply neurotic and problematic. However, I came to realize, for most people, empathy with animals is part of a continuum with empathy with humans. In fact, I think an important, and somewhat under-appreciated facet of human adaptive success, is that our ability to form empathetic bonds with animals has been enormously important for us. Humans have a long association with dogs, in particular, and I believe there’s reason to believe that there’s been adaptation on both sides: dogs are especially good at picking up signals from humans, and humans are surprisingly good at interpreting signals from dogs.
I don’t believe the problem is that people care too much about animals, but that some people are trained not to care about people.
There is a serious double standard applied to dogs. Police dog? You kick that dog you get charged with felony assault on a police officer. Officer shoots the family dog that barked at them? No issue, it’s just a dog.
A dog is loyal and protective to it’s companions by nature, how is it the police are allowed to use that to their advantage on their own behalf, and completely ignore it on others?
The problem is many times - and on video - cops don’t have a rational reason. They make a rash or callus decision.
Dogs are property. Before you bash in my door, knock out my window, or other wise damage my property you damn well better have a good reason. It better be a hell of a reason to shoot my dog.
I think that presumption is at the core of the issue here.
Yes, in the eyes of the law, dogs are property. But unlike a wrongly bashed in door or broken window, a wrongly killed dog can’t be repaired or replaced.
At some level, of course, you can just go get a new puppy from the pound, but that is the flawed reasoning upon which @megibson seems to have based his entire line of response in this thread.
While I agree that the problem (cops killing dogs with callous disregard and wanton frequency) could be somewhat ameliorated by a better respect for personal property on the part of the police, that approach doesn’t go far enough.
I’m really talking to @megibson here, in support and expansion of the point made by @Mister44
The thing (the dog) that was wrongly destroyed was a unique, living creature that had a two way emotional bond with a human being who is, by the (nominal) standards of jurisprudence, innocent of any crime until proven guilty in a court of law.
That relationship is irreplaceable. The grieving process will eventually provide the former owner some surcease from pain, but the relationship that was sundered is gone forever.
Regarding dogs as mere property does a disservice to both the dog and the owner. Further, it provides callous police officers an easy out, a guaranteed “righteous shoot”, a chance to do some killing with no second thoughts.
The documentary “Puppycide” seems to hope to expose this issue. I think that’s a worthwhile cause.
