First off it scares me to have a police office shouldn’t be in a trigger happy state when looking for a lost child. Second, the worst case scenario is the officer is unable to back away and suffers a dog bite. Who’s to say the lost child wasn’t in the same yard playing with the puppy.
By unequal measure police dogs receive expanded protection under the law beyond normally animal cruelty and often equivalent to that of a human officer.
I was thinking “what if that kid was hiding in some bushes?” – officer friendly probably would have squeezed off a couple rounds to protect himself from the “wild animal”.
Why should the camera man have been arrested? Why was the cops only choice to shoot the dog or die? Why do you think there is majority consensus about anything here? If you join up just to take an aggressive contrarian position, don’t be surprised if you meet some resistance.
Thanks for the link. Those folks are totally out of control.
The assertion wasn’t that dogs are people. It was that dogs are not property. The law regarding human property has changed over the decades, and I expect the law regarding canine property to also change, for similar reasons. It’s not just the problem of a sentient being suffering under ownership, it’s the bad habits learned by someone who gets to treat a sentient being as if it were a thing. That part is bad for everybody, owned or not.
Territorial dog barks at a stranger entering its territory. Stranger feels threatened enough to kill the dog. How does it not occur to a first responder that the child would feel similarly threatened by this dangerous dog? This had nothing to do with searching for a lost child. (Mightn’t the search have started in the house where the child was eventually found?) This has everything to do with speechless animals failing to “respect mah authratah!” (read it in Cartman’s voice)
If emergency personnel cannot math the logic in their brains, I don’t want them looking for lost children, never mind looking for lost children and using deadly force in the process. If the cop were serving a no knock search warrant, I’d be more credulous (a little) but this story stinks.
You know something? I owe you an apology. You see this sentence you wrote:
I say this as a childless (thank god!) dog owner who does not particularly like cops, and follows their abuse of power avidly.
I totally overlooked the “as a” in the sentence, and I thought you were talking about the guy whose dog got shot. It reads totally different. The misunderstanding is totally my fault. I am so sorry, man.
This
nonsense is akin to citing ridiculous conspiracy theories to try to prove that conspiracies never happen.
Great. As if parenting a young kid isn’t already full of nightmare fuel, you’ve just added another horror to the show. 
I get the emotions, and I agree that cops are shooting way to many people and other animals and that they are MANY examples of bad cops online. (See, e.g., photographyisnotacrime.com for just ONE site documenting such abuses.) I just want to point out that the cop was, hypothetically, in a very tough spot and that we don’t know all the facts.
What if there HAD been a kidnapped child on the premises?
Now for this hypothetical question to even be relevant to the present case, we MUST assume the cop had probable cause to enter the yard or house in the first place. If not, all bets are off. The video does not address the elements of probable cause other than portraying the sergeant asserting that the shooting officer had PC to suspect that the child was on the premises. Obviously if this is not true, they the shooter was 100% in the wrong. But what do we want police officers to do when they DO have PC to suspect that a missing child is such a residence?
Before addressing such a hypo, recognize that the fact that the kid was later found doesn’t affect whether or not the cops had PC to enter the property at the time of the investigation. We have to examine what it is like for a cop who has PC to suspect that a missing child has gone into or has been taken into a residence. What do we as a society want cops to do when they encounter an aggressive dog in the yard when they suspect a child’s life may be at risk in the house or when they receive a domestic abuse call or any other situation where they have PC to suspect that someone in the property may be in grave danger?
I am not arguing that the shooter was right, but we MUST put ourselves in his shoes and ask ourselves what we want the policy to be when 1) a child is lost and suspected to be in a neighbor’s house without his parents’ knowledge or permission, 2) no-one answers the doorbell at the suspect house, and 3) upon entering, an aggressive dog is encountered. What should we do? What if the child is upstairs, held prisoner? What if he is bleeding out or dying from poisoning while the kidnapper has fled? (The kidnapper needn’t be the owner of the property, of course.) How much time and special handling do we give to the dog before we say, “We suspect a lost child is on the premises and we can’t wait this long to get in there. Shoot the dog/cat/chimp/lion/tiger/bear/any other guard animal preventing the cop from investigating .”
I am not positing an answer, but we need to at least recognize, in a world of amber alerts, that this is not black and white.
In one his posts above he said, “I can’t wait for the day that animals have the same rights as humans,”
So no, while not people, he was asserting that they should be, “afforded the same rights as humans”.
More like “Planet Of The Apes”!
Regardless of who or who do not support the Police here. When all is said
and done they the Police are guilty of trespassing. They should be charged
for trespassing, unlawfully firing a firearm and charged with cruelty to
animals. The Police are not the LAW they are to serve the people and
protect. They are given a mandate of laws of their jurisdiction where they
Police. And the Police like the rest of the population must obey the laws
like everyone else. This will be swept under the carpet as it’ll never see
the days these so called officers of the law are held accountable for their
stupid actions. Still seems the USA law enforcement lives in the Wild West
Yahooooo
Oh and yeah if this dog was a Police dog and someone shot or even killed it
they’d be charged for attempt or first degree murder of a Police officer Go
figure this dog doesn’t get that option
Someone should really let them know.
“Lost child not found, presumed dead, as cowardly, frightened police officer is too scared to canvas neighborhood because of revered local man’s harmless, friendly dog”
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