Posted on 01/23/2011 7:41:15 PM PST by Immerito
Confronted by the family pet, police often shoot first and ask questions later, reports Radley Balko. Among hundreds of recent victims: Labradors, Wheaten terriers, and a five-pound Chihuahua.
Beginning next year, police departments in Maryland will be required to report to the governor's office every time they kill a dog during a drug raid. That requirement is part of a new law pushed by Cheye Calvo, the mayor of the small town of Berwyn Heights.
Calvo proposed the legislation because police officers conducted a particularly violent raid last summer on his home in Prince George's County after intercepting a package of marijuana at a delivery-service warehouse. The cops then completed the delivery themselves to the address on the package. As it turns out, the house belonged Calvo, who had no connection to the drugs. The package was part of a botched distribution scheme in which an accomplice working for the delivery service was supposed to have intercepted it before it was delivered.
Youre kicking down doors, barging in with guns, and when animals do what animals do, they become collateral damage.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
How *dare* you sir, question the we've-always-done-it-this-way rationale of the PTB.
Expect a visit. And if you know what's good for him, have your dog at a kennel.
From the article: “This sad trend appears to be a side effect of the new SWAT, paramilitary focus in many police departments, which has supplanted the idea of being an officer of the peace.
This is exactly what has happened to our police forces across the country. The HHS has expanded the war on Islamic terror to a war on the American people. We are all deemed suspected domestic “terrorists.”
The angrier people get from being abused in daily life (ie, at the airport or or other law enforcement contact) or having a friend or family member abused or seeing it in the news, the more respect Americans lose for the government and especially law enforcement.
That means they cooperate less less because they lose trust. We are headed for banana republic territory. This is actually making it MORE dangerous for police officers. They are making themselves an occupying force in our country. Check out Mexico!
We need to limit HHS to Islamic Terrorism only under the patriot act and we need to make politicans very sorry for calling Americans who are not Islamic terrorists - terrorists.
“where lives are in imminent danger.”
You mean, when a 10 pound poodle barks at them?
If you shoot a police K9, aren’t you charged with assaulting a police officer?
They're not making them anymore. The new ones are all tactical tommies who think they're living in a youtube video. The guy of which I speak was a forward artillery observer in Vietnam... he knew what was maximal badness and what was just a "problem".
I worked corrections, and early on learned that you could either fight all the time or call a con "Sir" when you needed compliance and get it done.
MD now has a “Castle defense doctrine”.
If, at 2 am, guys dressed in black who may or may not “claim” to be LEO break into my house, are they exempt from that law?
Our area has had its share of police impersonators kidnapping and raping lone women and I won’t pull over for a cop on a deserted highway.
I’d do what our law allegedly allows us to do; put on my flashers and drive to a well-lit, heavily populated place with lots of witnesses first.
Sitting at home, I don’t have that option and since I am involved in utterly NO criminal activity and therefore have no reason to expect cops in the dead of night, would I have the right to assume that black-clad people breaking and entering were an imminent threat to my safety?
The “plain cars” they use now have absolutely NO external ID and discrete internal lights that can be easily “faked”, if someone really wanted to.
One plain clothes cop we met while watching a bust go down was driving a shabby old Toyota and looked like a street bum.
Good disguise but possibly not a terribly wise one, considering he could ~easily~ be mistaken for a no-LEO criminal bent on mayhem.
I grew up in a town of 5,200 and we had a police chief and two assistants. I think there were a couple of part time ones too.
I no longer live there but am close enough that I visit maybe once a month. I see several cops every time. I mean there must be 50 cops on the force. The sad thing is most people want it that way.
The city still has the same population btw.
Yes and one that also carries a higher “rank” than its own handler.
My understanding is that a lot of home invasion robberies also go down like that, with the perps claiming to be the police in order to catch the occupants off guard.
Why do cops shoot dogs?
BECAUSE THEY CAN!
It’s a favorite way of demonstrating to the peons who has the badge/gun and who doesn’t.
One thing which has become totally prevalent is the cops handcuff everyone in the vicinity. They shackle everyone because it is “for my own protection”.
Cops are now trained to brutalize everyone rather than take any chances at all.
I remember Jeff Cooper mentioned in one of his columns that it was illegal in ancient Rome to shackle a citizen for any reason at all. Even in situations where they could kill you, they couldn’t shackle you if you were a citizen.
After reading that, I remembered the Apostle Paul was shackled by one of the Roman Governors and after he learned Paul was a citizen he became afraid because he had ordered a citizen to be chained.
The county sheriffs here are all local good ol’ boys.
They grew up in the mountains and never freak out over a barking yard dog.
The other LEO branches, not so much.
The “city cops” in the “big” town near here would just as soon shoot you as look at you.
The state troopers fall somewhere in between...really decent, local mellow guys and jacked-up out of town Rambos.
Even the DNR and park police carry guns now and are apparently paranoid as hell.
Yup, had some of those, too....for a short while.
Hillbillies only pretend to be stupid...:)
[LOVE your user name, BTW]
My understanding (I am not a lawyer nor am I employed or educated in the legal field) is that in some states, if you kill a police officer’s dog, you can be charged with murder of a police officer.
(Some relevant reading here: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1553192/ )
I believe that’s the law, here.
[and of all things I might go berserk and do, killing one of the most noble beasts on earth is *not* one of them]
Yeah I imagine that would be a pretty short-lived fad in Garrett or Allegheny Counties.
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