[Politically Correct]

3:05 The dog appears.
3:07 The dog is shot.

As the cop you have just made a felony stop.
For all you know you have a car full of bank robbers.
A dog exits the car snarling.

Ya got 2 seconds.......what are you going to do?

You people all make great Monday morning quarterbacks.

[Slip18]

At 2:18 Mr. Smoak told the LEOs that there were dogs in the car. The car door was apparently opened. How difficult would it have been to shut the car door?

[Rebelbase]

How much brains does it take to shut a car door? The driver pleaded with the officers that he had a dog in the car and was worried about it getting loose. If these LEO have to rely on hindsight for their common sense, I say they need to find work that does'nt invlove firearms.

[Rebelbase]

LOL, ignore the tagline from my post above. I carried over from another thread!

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

I would have closed the doors of the car in the first place. Second, the dog was not agressive in my book. I've trained dogs for thirty five years.

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. With the occupants out of the car and kneeling on the ground whatever potential there is for danger is pretty much over.

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.

[ijcr]

3 am Your front door bursts open.

3.02 You grab your legal handgun.

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?

[Hemingway's Ghost]

You obviously haven't seen the video.

[HairOfTheDog]

Watch the video. The dog did not have an aggressive posture. He was running around not sure where to go with his new-found freedom.

[LaraCroft]

That's why these 'people' are supposed to be trained to make snap decisions.

All this reminds me of those two videos making the rounds of cops, pointing their gun at suspects, firing the gun and then immediately screaming, "IT WASN'T ME, IT WASN'T ME" at the camera. Hello... these jerks don't even train, they have more gun accidents and accidental discharges than the general public, they shoot more innocent bystanders than the general public, and they are somehow vested in the right to haul you to jail for whatever offense they dream up. Anytime I see a cop with his gun out, I hide.

AND they are arrogant... breaking the law themselves with impunity. They speed, drink, do drugs, and don't even know the laws they are suppose to enforce and then they wonder why the general public dislikes them. Cops also forget that the majority of people are law abiding to a fault, good hearted, and decent. They think they can treat everyone like an inner city gang banger.

2 seconds.... gee.. he had a shotgun, seems like he could have waited a bit longer than onethousandone, onethousan.... to kill the poor thing. If he gave a rats ass about anything that is.

[MineralMan]

"As the cop you have just made a felony stop.
For all you know you have a car full of bank robbers.
"

Yeah, right. Let's see, Mom, Dad, the kids, and their pets. No bank robbery reported. The civilians cooperated with the felony stop. They asked the cops to close the car doors because there were dogs in the car. Cops don't do that, then shoot one of the dogs. Yes, good police work, indeed.

I am sick of the us/them relationship between civilians and cops. This is just another example.

[kako]

For all you know you have a car full of bank robbers.

What bank were they suspected as having robbed?

What was the basis for this suspicion? A single cell phone call from an anonymous person who saw a wallet fall off the top of the car?

For all I know, the FReeper named "Politically Correct" is really Osama Bin Laden and maybe a Predator drone should zap the location of the computer he is using.

All it takes is a phone call, active imagination and an idiot with the authority to kill w/o consequence.

[GovernmentShrinker]

If I was the cop who was holding the car door, lookinginside, saying "there's a dog in here", I'd have shut the door. I have a lot more sympathy for the cop who fired the shot, than for the cop (as yet unnamed, in any account I've read) whose negligence in leaving the door open created the problem of the loose dog in the first place. Imagine if that HAD been a vicious pit bull trained by its habitual felon owner, and it had attacked and seriously wounded one of the officers before any of them could shoot it. THEN what would the police department be doing about the officer who thought it was just fine to leave the car door open after he noticed a large dog inside?

[Wolfstar]

What you do prior to 3:05 is close the car doors to make sure the dogs can't get out and interfere with your "felony" stop. And if you're too wimpy and afraid of dogs to do it yourself, you let one of the family do it. Also, there are other non-fatal ways to stop a dog from charging you (if, in fact, that's what the dog was doing). But cops can get away with killing pets with total impunity, because there are no consequences. Most pets are considered to be property with little, if any, intrinisc value. This sort of thing happens more frequently than folks might imagine.

[hove]

"A dog exits the car snarling."

Right...the dog just opened the door of the car and lunged at the cops. If you read the threads and look at the video you will see that the cops were told that they had a dog in the car and the cops should have had the common sense not to let the dog loose on a busy highway. But they did...it jumped out...and they killed it. The cops used poor judgement and they performed poorly. They should be fired.

[cinFLA]

As the cop you have just made a felony stop. For all you know you have a car full of bank robbers.

That's the problem! There was NO felony!

[justshutupandtakeit]

There is more whining and anti-cop sentiment here than would be found at a RAT convention.

[PLOM...NOT!]

Except the dog was NOT snarling. It was bouncing around, wagging its' tail when it bounced up to the officer and got its' head shot off. Monday morning QB my A**, look at the video! That cop is dangerous and should be released from duty.