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After watching the video several times, I have several problems with this "felony stop."

At 17:20:10 on the tape, a THP officer moves up to the driver's side of the "suspect" vehicle and shines his flashlight into the car. At the same time, Mr. Smoaks tells the officers that he has dogs in the car. At this point, the THP officer should have seen the dogs as well. It was his duty at that time to recognize the danger these dogs posed to highway traffic and the safety of the officers and "suspects" - and contain the dogs. Failure to do so led to Patton, coming out of the car. This was NOT following proper procedure and should be shown in a civil suit as negligence.

Second, at 17:20:30 Mr. Smoaks clearly says he has dogs in the car and doesn't want them jumping out. At this time the officer who had approached the vehicle (I'd like to know which THP officer this was - I'm betting Lt. Jerry Andrews) was shining his flashlight down on Mr. Smoaks hands as a second THP officer was cuffing him and the third THP officer had cuffed Mrs. Smoaks and was now cuffing their son. There is no reason this officer could not, and should not, have secured the dogs in the car.

Third, Patton comes out of the car soon after Mr. Smoaks second warning, 17:20:35, perhaps 15 seconds after the THP officer should have identified the dogs and secured them. It was this negligence and improper procedure that led to Patton being shot.

Finally, I question Officer Hall's use of deadly force, but he'll beat any questions on this because he backed away from the dog and finally shot Patton at point blank range.

I found it very interesting that after Patton was shot and the THP officer cuffing the Smoaks son finished, he moved up to the vehicle at 17:21:02 and finally closed the door.

I watched and agree with you that the officer could have and should have closed the doors. I notice that Mr. Smoak did indeed close his door as he got out.

As to whether the officer was not "following proper procedure" by not closing the door, I do not know because I don't know what the proper procedure for their department is in that case... common sense says: close the damn door... but sometimes, as in this case, common sense gets forgotten in specified rules.

Officer Hall has already been found not to have used "excessive force" in his department's internal investigation of the event. From what I saw in the video, he did not shoot until he was in what he must have thought, eminent danger. Officer Hall does not have to wait until the dog is burying its teeth in his arm or leg before defending himself.

This is, as I have said before, a trajedy... officers attempting to do their duty according to procedure and doing it into which an uncontrollable, random element was thrown: the dog.

This chain of unfortunate events has enough mistakes to go around: the original misplacing of the wallet on the car, the misapprehension of the witness who called 9-1-1, the emergency operator escalating the call to require a felony stop, the not closing the car doors by all parties...