I agree with you. One of the more sensible comments on this topic - haven’t seen too many I’m afraid.
My husband was a good, decent police officer for 25 years and he’s now retired. He has scars from being knifed, had broken bones and had guns drawn on him. He has two life-saving accomodations. One for running into a burning house to rescue a woman, the other for finding an elderly man who had wandered away from a nursing home, and my husband found him along the railroad tracks. He would have froze to death, or been hit by a train if my husband didn’t find him when he did. Those are just two examples of his dedication to his job and society. Although he was in many dangerous situations, he always came home, thank God. Excuse me for being selfish, but I didn’t care (and still don’t, since he still works as an investigator) what he has to do to come home to me. Some may ask, why did he go through all of that and stick with it? Because he knew in his heart he was doing the right thing - even, unfortunately, if it meant putting his life on the line to protect probably a lot of people with the same narrow-minded ideas of cops as a number of people on here seem to have.
I’m certainly not defending the SWAT officers in this case. I just want to set the record straight, for the people who are basically saying to kill the “pigs” and other such ignorant comments, you are putting my husband’s life at even more risk, and I don’t appreciate it. My husband has to deal with enough danger out there. I don’t have a problem with someone voicing their disapproval of perhaps a police officer doing the wrong thing. But for someone to actually state that cops need to start dying instead of a dog? Those cops have wives and children, and they are fighting a battle every day.
And Gondring, I also agree that we likely will find alot of cops that are against Obama. The FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) are one of the very FEW unions who consistently support and endorse Republicans (as they did in this past election). My husband is a strong conservative and so are all of his friends who are officers. Many of them are strong Republicans and good Americans who have served their country in the military and continue serving their country by protecting society here at home. My husband also fought in Vietnam (while the hippies who called cops “pigs” burned their draft cards).
Then he's not the kind being talked about here, so why are you making him one?
Most cops don’t act this way (Ie Killing the dogs and no knocks with only informant information). There are way too many liability issues and it doesn’t go well for police/community relations. Finally, there could be terminations and criminal charges for the cops involved. The PD’s where this does happen (and it is isolated) need retraining and/or restructuring.
No Knock raids IHMO should happen in only a few cases.
1. Hostage situation/barricaded suspect
2. When you know that there is a dangerous situation for the officers and that evidence will be destroyed after conducting a thorough investigation and studying the property and the suspects on the property, using good police work. The Judge must sign off on the warrant.
In this case, the officers didn’t do a good investigation and were too fast to act.