Posted on 01/23/2011 7:41:15 PM PST by Immerito
Confronted by the family pet, police often shoot first and ask questions later, reports Radley Balko. Among hundreds of recent victims: Labradors, Wheaten terriers, and a five-pound Chihuahua.
Beginning next year, police departments in Maryland will be required to report to the governor's office every time they kill a dog during a drug raid. That requirement is part of a new law pushed by Cheye Calvo, the mayor of the small town of Berwyn Heights.
Calvo proposed the legislation because police officers conducted a particularly violent raid last summer on his home in Prince George's County after intercepting a package of marijuana at a delivery-service warehouse. The cops then completed the delivery themselves to the address on the package. As it turns out, the house belonged Calvo, who had no connection to the drugs. The package was part of a botched distribution scheme in which an accomplice working for the delivery service was supposed to have intercepted it before it was delivered.
“You’re kicking down doors, barging in with guns, and when animals do what animals do, they become collateral damage.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
And that’s why I have steel dead-bolt doors with peepholes.
Ain’t buyin’ nobody’s ‘word’ that they’re “cops” ‘til I see a lane full of of flashing lights on marked cruisers, uniforms and official badges.
Nope.
It sure was in western Washington county.
:)
Read my tagline. says it all.
True, and many here will cry when budgets force the cities to start laying off cops.
I say good riddance. We have way too many doing nothing but hassling the regular citizens and killing their dogs.
“Back then, the police were into POLICING.”
Back then, people on police forces knew who Robert Peel was and endeavored to police in accordance with his principles.
And it should be protecting us, not attacking us.
People think I am being funny when I say I have 3 dogs for this purpose. Its their job to take one for the team so my wife or relatives don’t get it.
Yep, I have been saying for some time that a good way to reduce the expenses for cities is to layoff 25% of the police. We have way too many cops abusing way too many citizens.
I have an old police scanner which also picks up some of the frequencies they no longer allow on private ones. There seems to be three kind of events being commented or called on.
One is brush fires. I never realized there were so many in this area. Another is ambulance runs, about what I would expect. The other is traffic stops. Most are just speeding but a very high number have warrants. Nearly every one is something like not paying a fine or failure to pay as they call it.
Very rarely it is a serious matter, robbery etc. Also a lot of people complaining about their neighbor’s dogs etc.
From the description, there was no need to break into the home, since the cops already had possession of the drugs. All they had to show was that the recipients were expecting and paid for the drugs. Kind of like the stings they do.
Even during highly charged police raids on houses guarded by aggressive dogs, it’s hard to see how shooting them is the best option. A grazing shot will only make the dog angrier. A miss imperils other officers and innocent bystanders.
During a terribly tragic drug raid in Lima, Ohio, last year, an officer shot and killed the suspect’s two pit bulls shortly after the drug team entered the house. Another officer mistook the shots for hostile fire, and sprayed bullets into a bedroom, where a 26-year-old unarmed woman named Tarika Wilson had dropped to her knees, as ordered, while holding her 1-year-old son. Wilson died, the infant lost a hand.
btrl
Good point. If the cops regulated their testosterone better, there would be fewer instances like this. Someone somewhere must have done a study. What makes cops this way? I’m tired of their power trips.
Police feel they have a right, even a duty, to shoot someone if they go to an address for damned near anything. It is incumbent on people whose circumstances make it possible to keep a dog or two so that any police coming to one's residence has someone to shoot who is not the resident or his guest or dependent. I have long wondered if all this isn't part of union contracts.
Those kinds.
It is the “drug war” that has set up this system of “policing.” It is a war that cannot be “won” but will further and further lock down the population and is slowly turning into an actual Terror regine, real political Terror in the original meaning or the capitalized word. That is a means of control BY THE GOVERNMENT of the population by random and frequent acts of violence against the people and disappearances for little, no, or obviously false reasons to keep the people off balance and too afraid to do anything at all that the State might notice. It began with the French Revolution and Le Directoire and was polished by Lenin and Stalin. The US federal law enforcement, state LEA and local police are continually training in these tactics and practicing them, polishing them and getting the people used to fearing them.
. It is always an "accident" or "inadvertent" if there is no opportunity to drop a spare weapon or baggie by the person shot. Why did not the officer merely say he "feat threatened?" That formula statement seems to justify a cop shooting anyone at all who is not a prominent liberal politician.
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