I absolutely don’t want to take anything away from #Blackivesmatter. The politicians have shown an amazing callousness in ignoring those voices. Would it make any difference at all, if animal welfare agencies started a #dogslivesmatter campaign in parallel? A lot of bigots own dogs, and could see the injustice here, without asking about the dog’s previous history of chewing the shoes, chasing the cat, etc.
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“I respect what the police do, but this was senseless, but he didn’t show any remorse and didn’t even act like he was sorry or anything,” Malone told FOX 25.
“Blue Lives Matter” type? Interesting.
I think a lot of this seems to come down to the fact that a lot of US police use armed force as their first resort, rather than their last…
Whilst i think de-weaponising the police would be too much to ask for in the current climate, i do suggest a compromise of sending out police officers with single-use breakable tags on the holsters.
Break the tag (ie by drawing your gun) = automatic disciplinary offence unless you can give a damn good reason why you thought you were in a life-or-death situation. Too many offences and you lose your job…
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I know that isn’t your intent, but I think that hashtag would imply (at least to some) that a dog’s life should be worth the same as a black person’s, or that fixing the the “police shooting dogs” issue is as important as fixing the “police shooting black people” issue.
I think a hashtag campaign to protest police killing dogs is probably a good idea, but I’d keep it as separate from #BLM as possible, to avoid that sort of thing.
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will not work without a general overhaul of procedures, attitudes and training. a vague feeling is more often than not accepted as totally fine reason.
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FTFY! 
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I care more about the lives of my dogs than I do ANY cop.
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Well, yeah, but “one” is way too many.
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That’s what would get me in trouble. I’m not a cop hater, but I am an abusive thug hater, and my pets are family, no matter who you are.
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‘Way too many’ is damn right. Well deserved correction. Thanks!
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So people might start to ask why they prioritize an obligation to an abstract legal code over ethical treatment of the actual people they find themselves interacting with. Who benefits by having a litigious society? (real question)
Then it’s a good thing that some of us are not asking, but demanding. If they are really in service to the community, then the community sets the conditions for service. “If you refuse to be an unarmed officer, them I’m sorry. Let us know if you need a reference”.
Why would that be controversial? Is there some sort of scale for measuring life worth? Or is this mere speciesism? I agree that it is better to keep such arguments separate for clarity, but I think that the underlying problem there denotes several possible kinds of prejudice. Most arguments for human exceptionality I encounter are simple self-serving bias - on a species scale.
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Just another example of why the citizenry is angry, tired and pissed off at the paramilitary police force we have that shoots first and asks questions later. And the police look around in a bewildered state wondering why people are trying to shoot to and kill them now?
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Yeah, I pretty much agree with you.
And yet… I still can’t get over the police killing of Milton Olin Jr. The problem with police bigotry, as bad as that is, is only compounded by a complete lack of public accountability. Pet owners, and white people, and any other civilian group you care to name, have a stake in this project. When police accountibility is thought of as something only black people care about, it frames the issue in the weakest possible manner. (Government has been ignoring black voices for centuries, we have to reverse that before we can begin reforming the police?)
The cops need to be brought under control. That’s pretty obvious no matter who is being killed.
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By far the most threatening thing I encounter in my life is a cop. I don’t know if I’ll be shot, charges drummed up, or have my valuables stolen when I deal with them. I live in Oak Cliff Texas btw if anyone wants to check the rep of my neighborhood to get an idea of how messed up that is.
edit to add a link to our crime blog http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/category/oak_cliff/ and http://spotcrime.com/tx/dallas/oak+cliff
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I bet it was a Chocolate Labrador. People, if you want to keep your dogs alive, get Golden Labradors!
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The answer to your first question, I’d suggest, is corporate personhood. When the 14th amendment can be construed as applying to corporate persons, then #corporatelivesmatter is not that much of a stretch.
Your third question, I think has to do with the way these issues are framed, and the way our political opponants like to derail an argument rather than address it. It’s a false dichotomy, to rank one type of police abuse as deserving more attention than another. Sloppy police work poses a threat to civilians. It’s simply not necessary to rank these civil rights abuses in order of importance, before we demand better work from our public servants!
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There has to be.
Every moment I exist, my immune system is killing off life forms in my blood stream. Every day I inhale tiny creatures that my body kills. When I eat bread and cheese, the bacterial cultures from the fungi and bacterial cultures that call them home are digested into nothingness. When I bake bread or brew alcohol, the yeasts that help out with those acts of creation die in the process.
Whether the line should be drawn where the Jainists draw it (using brooms and face masks to avoid killing even insects), or where the vegans draw it, or between great apes and the rest of the animal kingdom, or between humans and everyone else, or some people even draw their divisions within humanity… Somewhere, there is a line, on one side of which is “it is acceptable for these life forms to die so that I may live.” The alternative is suicide, because I know of no organism within the animal kingdom that can live without somehow killing some other form of life in its struggle to survive.
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They’re not generally talented, and certainly not trained, at the ‘sincere’ part.
I don’t see what was protected or served, other than Officer Gunshot’s ego.
No, they really aren’t. That’s a corporate policy, not a public service mandate. They’re already protected by several layers of lawyers and precedent when it comes to prosecuting or even suing them,
What they do have is a thin blue noose around their necks if they do.
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As interesting as this topic is, it in no way applies to the use of force in this article. If the cop on the scene had been doing his job properly, he could have exhausted his warrant without firing his weapon. (Dunno if you could say the warrant could have been served at all, if the subject had been gone for a decade)
I think nattering on about these kind of distinctions is only important if the guy with the gun is facing some kind of trolley dilemna. He clearly wasn’t in this case.
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