Posted on 01/09/2003 5:33:49 AM PST by Rebelbase
Edited on 05/07/2004 9:20:17 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Three minutes and seven seconds tells the story of a dog named Patton.
The dog, which was shot at close range Jan. 1 by a Cookeville policeman during a felony traffic stop, belonged to the James Smoak family of Saluda, N.C. At the time, the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected the Smoaks
(Excerpt) Read more at tennessean.com ...
This is definitely part of it. Cops love docile citizens.
They cuff you and toss you in the back seat. Then they slide the frontseat all the way back and check out if you're in enough discomfort.
The cuffing of the family on their knees speaks volumes. The killing of the dog was the period.
Lousey friggin' hacks!
3.03 You see 5 men in black carrying guns in your living room.
You have 2 secs.....What are you going to do?
Why is it that only LEO's are justified with this 2 sec rule?
I'm going to shoot the bastards and ask questions later. Don't take my original reply as a justification of police tactics. It's just that given all the adrenaline in the situation I'm not surprised at the result and I don't necessarily fault the individual when split second decisions have to be made. This all went down way to fast to expect any other outcome.
You didn't see the video did you? That dog jumped down out of the car, left the screen and two seconds later, was "threatening" the cop. I put "threatening" in quotes because that was the shooters determination. You and I can not make that determination based on the video alone and I know from experience never to put trust in a strange dog's "posture".
Have you watched the video?
There's only a few seconds between the "close the door" request and when the dog bounds out.
There just wasn't enough time for the right things to happen.
I shed few tears when I read about their deaths in no-knock drug raids.
Oh, come on! You are recreating the picture to make it appear the Beaver Cleaver family and their little toy poodle Mitzi were the family in issue.
Actually, there was a late 30s man, a late 30s woman, a 17 year-old male, and a mixed mongrel mutt that looked like a pitt bull. There had been a reported felony in progress (wrong call, but cops are damned and sued if they don't treat every call as being based in fact). Meanwhile, cops are getting shot by bone-head "constitutionalists" merely for making traffic stops. This cop reacted in a way that could reasonably be expected given his vantage point.
It's unfortunate. It's a terrible shame the dog was killed. But hindsight helps no one but the nut cases and the John Edwards/Johnnie Cochran tort lawyer bar.
Correction. You applaud and cheer.
Meanwhile you never breathe word of thanks for the good work they do keeping you and your property safe.
Ingrate.
Who the owner or the cop?
Felony stop the cops are not up there around the doors.
I've trained dogs for thirty five years.
I've been around multiple dogs (large dogs) for decades.
What I've learned is that I can read my dogs pretty well. But I can't necessarily read a strange dog.
We may have gone downhill as a nation, but a station wagon full of luggage with a family inside is pretty rarely a group of crazed felons.
I agree, that might have been a clue that perhaps they have the wrong car.
With the occupants out of the car and kneeling on the ground whatever potential there is for danger is pretty much over.
No, there's still the dog. One thing I've learned over the years. Never underestimate how much damage a large dog can do to you in just seconds.
If the dog was viscious and the family were thugs, the dog would have been the first one out of the car or would at least have been snapping and barking at the windows.
Not necessarily, I've personally known a watchdog that was trained not to bark, just attack if you came in the door uninvited. I personally think this is a bad idea, but that's how it had been trained.......scary.
This stinks to high heaven
Whaaa? Why did the cop have a shotgun in his hands? Right things to happen? Whaaa?
I once called the cops because of a rabid racoon wandering in circles in my backyard.
Did the two cops who showed up take it out with their batons? Nah... to easy.
They followed it thru three yards and spent half a day on this big case!
If I were the family, I would sue that town back to the stoneages.
No I don't shed tears when cops die from no-knock warrantless raids - because they are unconstitutional in my book. And cops need to protect and serve the citizens, not terrorize them.
My loyalty is to the US Consitution. If a cop has demonstrated his loyalty is to something else, then that cop is a domestic enemy of the Contitution. And unlike that cop, I have taken an oath to defend it.
Can you say "Felony stop"?
I knew you could.
In hindsight a felony stop was not indicated....but that's hindsight which is always 20-20.
The last years of his career were spent as the Chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he’d touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens, would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
My sister is married to a good guy – who was also a good cop.
And I STILL vividly recall a business trip and having a flat tire. I pulled onto the narrow shoulder and was opening the trunk when I spied a Georgia State Trooper’s car cross the median, hit the flashers and pull in some distance behind me and a bit closer to the road, shielding me and my car from the 70 MPH traffic. SHE got out and asked if I needed any help. I told her I could probably handle it. She said she’d keep her unit there until I got done.
THEN she spotted my cane and saw that I was partially disabled. Before I could object, she was in the trunk, had wrestled the spare to the ground and was jacking up the car, all the while asking me to remain safely near the guard rail. About that time, two county deputies stopped and pitched in. The lady trooper cut her hand fooling with the jack and soiled her freshly pressed uniform wrestling the dirty flat back into the trunk. They couldn’t have been nicer! I took their names and wrote highly complimentary letters to their superiors – all of whom promptly acknowledged them and thanked me for the kind words.
These officers – like my uncle – grasped the significance of “To Protect and Serve.”
I also recognize that the cops – like Gort in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” -- are simply the muscle (the “enforcement”) behind the legislative and statutory “law” enacted by society as a whole. That is, after all, why it’s called “LAW ENFORCEMENT.” And although it could be argued that this society may be morphing into the homonym for “whole” as you read this, these laws are enacted by our alleged “representatives” meeting in generally safe, quiet and opulent chambers far from the increasingly mean streets where the cops ply their trade. If the cops have too many intrusive and abusive laws to enforce, check the nearest mirror for a likeness of the responsible party.
And if the cops ARE abusive to the general citizenry, why aren’t HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of us RAISING UNHOLY HELL at each and every meeting of the responsible governing body? French political philosopher Joseph D'Maistre declared that "Every people gets the government they deserve."
Have we really become the “nation of sheep” an author foresaw many years ago? If so, we have little right to object to the shearing. Or the coming slaughter and culling of the flock. And my guess is that the culling will begin with the most troublesome and noisiest sheep. And guess who THAT is?
An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.
Having said that, I also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! -- spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem. There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Wrong. The use of deadly force was not authorized here. The cops life was not in immediate danger. The people were on the ground, secured and handcuffed. The dog was NOT in attack stance, it was not running and did not display the typical aggressive signals.
It is a cop-out to say the officer did not know better. He should have known better. He has the power and the authority here, he da*n well better have the responsibility and accountability. And he will be held responsible. If not, then it will be proved again that LEOs are above the law, and no longer hold to their oath to protect and serve the citizens of the United States.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.