A lab is like any animal, it will growl and bite if cornered. I know, got one laying on my feet right now and he’s real gentle. But he will growl at strangers and was aggressive as well when he still had his gear. He started mouthing my son, trying to dominate him and I rolled him for it. He didn’t do it again but he still has the potential to do anything. As long as he has teeth and instincts, I can never trust him completely.
You CANNOT see what the lab is doing other then standing still, you cannot hear if he is growling so stop trying to extrapolate and be honest about the situation. You and I don’t know, but the officer in the front did. He was there in living color and his actions are going to documented. There will probably add more info than the camera did.
Oh now it’s a real man issue? Those officers are not there to manhandle the dog. You conveniently ignored the reasons I gave you for why they cannot get into some struggle with the dog. You reach for a dog and bites the piss out of your hand, guess what? Now you are wounded and a liability for the mission and maybe your career is over because of nerve damage. Even if you don’t have nerve damage, a chief is going to suspend you for poor judgment. I have seen that happen to an officer.
They are there to clear a house of possible dangerous suspects, one who was already in custody and wanted for murder. And they are not going to do it with just three officers, there were more than that there.
If you had ever been a police officer, you would know it’s not pride that you feel when you don’t have to shoot, it’s profound relief, because shooting anything other than qual target is a GD headache. Just drawing your weapon is a multipage incident report.
One officer opened fire, not three. And the stupid neighbors are always told to go inside but just HAVE to see what’s going so they willfully put themselves into a volatile situation. Nothing new, see it everyday. Gunshots all night long and nobody saw nothing, but let the police shoot once and then EVERYONE saw it.
The fact remains that the video does not document any aggressive behavior from the lab. Even if the lab did growl, a growling, but not advancing lab is not a de facto deadly threat.
It is well documented that corrupt cops have shot dogs and claimed to be threatened by them afterward, even when non-cop, non-owner witnesses to the shootings acknowledged that the dog in question was not showing aggression or otherwise threatening the cop.
However, aggressive behavior from the SWAT team was documented.
The lab in this video did not *have* to be shot. The SWAT team members had other options.
Those options were deliberately not attempted or exercised.
We have a military. I support them doing their job of killing people and breaking things. If members of SWAT teams want to kill people and break things, they should sign up there.
Police are not the military; they are people who have taken up an oath to protect and serve, operating by the principles Robert Peel established for the modern police force.
When the police become a standing army unto themselves, then we have created what the Founders warned against.