Police dog's killer gets a life term: Conviction was man's third strike

First off, killing a dog, without a good reason (ie, the dog was rabid, it was out of control and attacking him) will usually get anyone at least a few months in prison, under animal cruelty laws, even if it’s just a stray or someone’s pet. Second of all, he had a gun, which is illegal for a convicted felon, AND if possession wasn’t enough to get him his third strike, he used it in a crime. Also, whatever the guy was doing that caused the officers to confront him with the dog was probably illegal, and he may well have gotten punished for that. The canine officer wasn’t like some gangster’s ‘thug dog’ that might attack without warning - it was highly trained, a human officer must make the decision and give an order for it to bring down a criminal, and if you look at stuff about police misconduct, they’re much better at following orders than human officers. And, last but not least, the dog was probably somewhere in the vicinity of its human handler, so considering that police in general tend to shoot when someone draws a gun at them (not like the stuff in the movies or on TV when they walk forward slowly and try to talk the guy out of shooting), and the guy went further and discharged a weapon in their general direction, he’s lucky they didn’t just shoot him dead on the spot.

As far as the three-strikes rule, the guy was a twice-convicted felon who wouldn’t play by the rules - what should we do, keep spending time and money and clog up the court system with fourth and fifth and tenth time repeat offenders, and just install a revolving door on the jail? That’s why we have three-strikes rules,

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