If you shoot my arthritic, friendly, unthreatening dog for no damn good reason, expressing how contrite you are because, gosh, you’re a dog owner yourself does nothing but give me a target.
For those who don’t know, this particular area of Oakland is a very nice, upscale neighborhood. For a cop to react to this sweet old lab in that environment as though she were a crackhouse-trained attack rottie or pit bull is so outrageous that I’d expect the local PETA terrorists to get off their asses and firebomb Victor Garcia’s house if they had any balls.
There’s a lot of incidents like this one floating around, like turds in a toilet bowl.
Anecdotes may not be data, but when this kind of behavior is condoned, it will actually make the jobs of police far harder.
And that doesn’t even get into the kind of extralegal actions a person may take if they’re mad with fury and grief.
“In this case, the officer probably didn’t have time for pepper spray or Tasers, Thomason said.” So tell me, does it take longer to draw and fire an aimed shot from a pistol or from a can of pepper spray or from a T.A.S.E.R.? Three shots at that, and each shot, count em each and every one, has to be justified as the use of deadly force even when shooting a dog. So what happened, the dog barked and he fired once, the dog growled and he fired twice, the dog dropped dead and he fired for good measure, one has to wonder considering the claimed condition of the aging pooch? Was it actually threatening him with more than a bark or growl???
Maybe he had no or little experience with dogs and was afraid, or maybe he wanted to shoot something cauze he is a looney, or maybe even he truly felt threatened by the dog because it was truly threatening. All of it doesn’t matter, the result was terrible because this was a beloved family pet and the cops were there on a false alarm, and the woman left just when she did, and the cop graduated his academy and was a decent shot, and shit happens even if it is truly sad and miserable. If the cop was alooney or a cowboy, I hope they fire him and maybe put him in jail; if not I have to wonder can you blame him? I own 4 dogs, and have also slammed cops, several times, who acted inappropriatly before, so please don’t tell me I don’t like dogs or am too pro LE.
All the best,
GB
I don’t get how an arthritic, dysplasia-afflicted labrador could incite any emotion or reaction other than “Gee, I want to pet this old dog and give ’em a treat.”
If the sight of a dog that old (i.e. one foot in grave, the other on the banana peel) actually makes you *afraid*, then you’ve got no business being in LE. This guy would easily soil his ballistic Depends if confronted by an actual threat.
Who keeps giving these idiots badges and guns? And what idiots keep protecting them from the consequences of their actions?
Both should be fired. If you’re so damn incompetent you have to shoot a dog for growling at you IN HIS YARD… And the moron making excuses for him is making the job of the good cops that much harder.