Posted on 09/23/2010 7:45:07 AM PDT by Inappropriate Laughter
Family members claim they called police for help Wednesday morning, but when officers arrived, they were treated like criminals and an officer shot and killed their family dog. It all unfolded in the 1100 block of Fiji Lane in Landover.
Four-year-old Mercedes, a Rottweiler mix, is the latest dog shot and killed by police in Prince George's County.
Dog owner Sterling Barlow said about Mercedes, "Cold blood... Shot in the head for no reason."
The problem started when owner Sterling Barlow's brother pulled into the family driveway after work early Wednesday morning. The family claims two men immediately approached, armed with a gun and demanding his car. The brother managed to fight them off, ran into the house and came back out firing his gun.
"If somebody did that to your family you will retaliate the best way you know how," said Barlow.
After a shootout with the alleged robbers, the two brothers called police. When police arrived, Barlow says things got out of hand with the officers and his innocent dog paid the tragic price.
Barlow said, "One grabs me in the head lock and starts punching me in the face."
Mother Dwana Barlow said, "The police officer wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom... and held me hostage in my own house."
While being wrestled to the ground by five different cops, Barlow and witnesses in the neighborhood tell us a female Prince George's County officer shot the dog in the head.
Barlow stated, "While this was going on I said 'please, don't point a gun at my dog.' I begged her. She didn't need to be involved in this. She was in the yard."
But Barlow was arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including insulting an officer. Police say the officer acted appropriately when shooting the dog.
Neighbor Barbara Wells said, "The dog did not attack anyone. He never approached anyone. Even as the officers grabbed Sterling the dog didn't do anything."
Police spent hours Wednesday searching for the full police report. Around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, police called ABC 7 News on the phone and confirmed that an officer did shoot and kill the dog out of self defense. There will be a police investigation but that officer will not be placed on administrative leave.
The alleged robbers have not been found.
You were not respectful.
You arrogantly insulted a fellow FReeper for no reason.
This is a simple fact and if you can’t understand this and admit it then there is something wrong with you.
As for the passages from the article you excerpt, nothing there shows that the dog was restrained. Genoa and I (and others) simply expressed the opinion that if you call the police to come to your house to investigate a violent crime then you should secure your dog away from the responding officers.
If you have some reasonable, intelligent rejoinder to this opinion then you have not yet stated it.
How?
Why does someone have to confine their property (dog) because they call the police. If the dog is well trained and does not attack the police the police have no right to do anything to the dog. The article does not indicate the dog was doing anything to the police. This looks to me like an over reaction by the police and a destruction of private property.
FREEZE! I JUST HAD MY NAILS DONE!
March 16, 2005
How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists? Last week, a defendant in a rape case, Brian Nichols, wrested a gun from a female deputy in an Atlanta courthouse and went on a murderous rampage. Liberals have proffered every possible explanation for this breakdown in security except the giant elephant in the room — who undoubtedly has an eating disorder and would appreciate a little support vis-a-vis her negative body image.
The New York Times said the problem was not enough government spending on courthouse security (”Budgets Can Affect Safety Inside Many Courthouses”). Yes, it was tax-cuts-for-the-rich that somehow enabled a 200-pound former linebacker to take a gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother.
Atlanta court officials dispensed with any spending issues the next time Nichols entered the courtroom when he was escorted by 17 guards and two police helicopters. He looked like P. Diddy showing up for a casual dinner party.
I think I have an idea that would save money and lives: Have large men escort violent criminals. Admittedly, this approach would risk another wave of nausea and vomiting by female professors at Harvard. But there are also advantages to not pretending women are as strong as men, such as fewer dead people. Even a female math professor at Harvard should be able to run the numbers on this one.
Of course, it’s suspiciously difficult to find any hard data about the performance of female cops. Not as hard as finding the study showing New Jersey state troopers aren’t racist, but still pretty hard to find.
Mostly what you find on Lexis-Nexis are news stories quoting police chiefs who have been browbeaten into submission, all uttering the identical mantra after every public safety disaster involving a girl cop. It seems that female officers compensate for a lack of strength with “other” abilities, such as cooperation, empathy and intuition.
There are lots of passing references to “studies” of uncertain provenance, but which always sound uncannily like a press release from the Feminist Majority Foundation. (Or maybe it was The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which recently released a study claiming that despite Memogate, “Fahrenheit 911,” the Richard Clarke show and the jihad against the Swiftboat veterans, the press is being soft on Bush.)
The anonymous “studies” about female officers invariably demonstrate that women make excellent cops — even better cops than men! One such study cited an episode of “She’s the Sheriff,” starring Suzanne Somers.
A 1993 news article in the Los Angeles Times, for example, referred to a “study” –- cited by an ACLU attorney — allegedly proving that “female officers are more effective at making arrests without employing force because they are better at de-escalating confrontations with suspects.” No, you can’t see the study or have the name of the organization that performed it, and why would you ask?
There are roughly 118 million men in this country who would take exception to that notion. I wonder if women officers “de-escalate” by mentioning how much more money their last suspect made.
These aren’t unascertainable facts, like Pinch Sulzberger’s SAT scores. The U.S. Department of Justice regularly performs comprehensive surveys of state and local law enforcement agencies, collected in volumes called “Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics.”
The inestimable economist John Lott Jr. has looked at the actual data. (And I’ll give you the citation! John R. Lott Jr., “Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments and Crime,” Economic Inquiry, April 1, 2000.)
It turns out that, far from “de-escalating force” through their superior listening skills, female law enforcement officers vastly are more likely to shoot civilians than their male counterparts. (Especially when perps won’t reveal where they bought a particularly darling pair of shoes.)
Unable to use intermediate force, like a bop on the nose, female officers quickly go to fatal force. According to Lott’s analysis, each 1 percent increase in the number of white female officers in a police force increases the number of shootings of civilians by 2.7 percent.
Adding males to a police force decreases the number of civilians accidentally shot by police. Adding black males decreases civilian shootings by police even more. By contrast, adding white female officers increases accidental shootings. (And for my Handgun Control Inc. readers: Private citizens are much less likely to accidentally shoot someone than are the police, presumably because they do not have to approach the suspect and make an arrest.)
In addition to accidentally shooting people, female law enforcement officers are also more likely to be assaulted than male officers — as the whole country saw in Atlanta last week. Lott says: “Increasing the number of female officers by 1 percentage point appears to increase the number of assaults on police by 15 percent to 19 percent.”
In addition to the obvious explanations for why female cops are more likely to be assaulted and to accidentally shoot people — such as that our society encourages girls to play with dolls — there is also the fact that women are smaller and weaker than men.
In a study of public safety officers — not even the general population — female officers were found to have 32 percent to 56 percent less upper body strength and 18 percent to 45 percent less lower body strength than male officers — although their outfits were 43 percent more coordinated. (Here’s the cite! Frank J. Landy, “Alternatives to Chronological Age in Determining Standards of Suitability for Public Safety Jobs,” Technical Report, Vol. 1, Jan. 31, 1992.)
Another study I’ve devised involves asking a woman to open a jar of pickles.
There is also the telling fact that feminists demand that strength tests be watered down so that women can pass them. Feminists simultaneously demand that no one suggest women are not as strong as men and then turn around and demand that all the strength tests be changed. It’s one thing to waste everyone’s time by allowing women to try out for police and fire departments under the same tests given to men. It’s quite another to demand that the tests be brawned-down so no one ever has to tell female Harvard professors that women aren’t as strong as men.
Acknowledging reality wouldn’t be all bad for women. For one thing, they won’t have to confront violent felons on methamphetamine. So that’s good. Also, while a sane world would not employ 5-foot-tall grandmothers as law enforcement officers, a sane world would also not give full body-cavity searches to 5-foot-tall grandmothers at airports.
COPYRIGHT 2005 ANN COULTER
The article does not state exactly what the dog was doing or where. Nor does it state what the local laws are concerning how dogs must be confined. I expressed no opinion as to whether the officer's actions were legal or reasonable. I did not say that someone "has to" confine their dog. I just think it is stupid not to. You have police responding to a report of a violent crime. They are going to be concerned for their own safety and acutely aware of potential threats. Why wouldn't you take your dog inside while you talk to the police?
How?
I am not going to explain why your Reply #12 is insulting because I assume that you are trolling. If you are genuinely too crazy and/or stupid to understand why what you said was insulting then you have my sympathies and I sincerely hope that you outgrow your condition somehow.
Thank you!!!!!!!!!
You are right you did not say some one has to confine their dog. But you did say “ read the article and wondered myself why the dog wasn’t confined somewhere away from the arriving officers.”
You implied that teh dog need to be confined. As I said why should it be. If the police are professional and the animal is controlled then no confinement is required. To qoute the O the police acted stupidly.
Your commment “You have police responding to a report of a violent crime. They are going to be concerned for their own safety and acutely aware of potential threats.” If I am the one who calls them then I should not have to be fearfull of them, they should be coming to my aid. If they are not then they are not the public servents that they should be.
In answer to your question “Why wouldn’t you take your dog inside while you talk to police?”, because I do not have to do so on my property. I am not a subject that has to be diffenrential to them.
The daughter of a friend back home woke one night to noises in the house. The husband went to investigate and found one of the kids from across the street crawling through the house. Drunk, on drugs or whatever. The perp is related to one of the local constabulary and they let him go.
I’d have blown his brains out and maybe call the cops after.
Yes, I know how to spell guerrilla.
So the cops are in the right to walk up to any dog that is not “secured” or “restrained”, regardless of what the dog is or is not doing at the time?
If the dog is not “secured away from” the cops, but is just sitting there in the yard, watching what’s going on, the cop is justified in walking up to it and shooting it?
There was nothing reported in the article that indicated the dog presented any kind of viable threat to any of the officers. Eye witnesses stated that the dog was not doing anything and the female cop walked up to it and shot it in the head.
Let’s say it was sitting there barking excitedly at what was going on. Is that proper cause to execute it?
The owner stated that she had time to say to the cop, “please don’t point your gun at my dog! Don’t shoot my dog!” This would seem to indicate the cop was walking up to the dog with gun drawn - not hurriedly pulling out her gun to defend herself from a vicious attacking animal.
There simply is nothing there to indicate that the cop was presented with a real threat of imminent serious physical injury that would justify such a use of force.
Yeah, I know, we weren’t there, and it’s the cops word against the other witnesses, but it certainly sounds like the cop was not in any real danger and just decided to “neutralize” the dog.
If America collapses into war, then unlike in the middle east combatants wearing civilian clothes will be shot by legitimate forces, as mandated by civilized rules of warfare for centuries.
And, at least this time it sounds like the dog made it easy on the officer by just letting the officer kill it rather than actually attacking or defending its home or running for its life or hiding as is sometimes the case in these police shootings.
Just curious, is that more or less what you think we should accept and expect from cops in the obamanation's new pseudo-police state to be, along with no-knock raids and other techniques that keep us and the Constitution safe? The police should feel free to shoot our animals with impunity?
We are rapidly losing our liberty and our country. Spewing incoherent nonsense will not help anything. Please try to get a mitt and get into the actual game.
Do some research. This isn't a game.
He goes to church, and then hangs out with his FOP brethren FULL TIME! Family events are all intertwined with FOP. Though raised under my Conservative Christian (semi-LIBERTARIAN )roof, he went over to the dark side long ago! He was/is even the UNION Rep!
Try "popping a cap" without an adrenaline rush to follow! It is nigh impossible, and then when you actually kill something, it goes up exponentially. Hunters often go for the kill, not the meat. Cops like to shoot dogs because they can!
Firemen are little different in their motivations. Junkies are....
Not the dog in question...
The authorities in this area really love killing dogs.
Look up the “puppycide” posts at Radley Balko’s The Agitator
site. I suppose a more correct word would be “canicide”
but I don’t care much about that. One recent higher profile
incident near Baltimore was in the Quail Run dog park.
Another sigificant detail (”her shoulder”). BTW, I really
have to go out and Do Stuff, so I can’t give cites but
ISTR that completely confining the dog often doesn’t help
a bit.
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