Posted on 01/03/2003 4:20:59 PM PST by Copernicus
'Felony stop' leaves family traumatized
Mary Jo Denton
Herald-Citizen Staff
It was the most traumatic experience the Smoak family of North Carolina has ever had, and it happened yesterday afternoon as they traveled through Cookeville on their way home from a vacation in Nashville.
Before their ordeal was over, three members of the family had been yanked out of their car and handcuffed on the side of Interstate 40 in downtown Cookeville, and their beloved dog, Patton, had been shot to death by a police officer as they watched.
****************************
About that time, he heard the officer broadcast orders over a bullhorn, telling him to toss the keys out the car window and get out with his hands up and walk backwards to the rear of the car.
Still not knowing what he was being stopped for, Smoak obeyed, and when he reached the back of the car, with a gun pointed at Smoak, the trooper ordered him to get on his knees, face the back of the car and put his head down.
When he did that, the officer handcuffed him and placed him in the patrol car. Then the same orders were blared over the bullhorn to "passenger" and Pamela Smoak got out with her hands up, was ordered to the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed. Next, Brandon was ordered out and handcuffed in the same way.
Terrified at what was happening to them for no reason they knew, the family was also immediately concerned about their two pet dogs being left in the car there on the highway with the car doors open.
"We kept asking the officers -- there were several officers by now -- to close the car doors because of our dogs, but they didn't do it," said Pamela Smoak.
And as the officers worked in the late evening darkness, their weapons drawn as the Smoaks were being handcuffed, the dog Patton came out of the car and headed toward one of the Cookeville Police officers who was assisting the THP.
"That officer had a flashlight on his shotgun, and the dog was going toward that light and the officer shot him, just blew his head off," said Pamela Smoak.
"We had begged them to shut the car doors so our dogs wouldn't get out, and they didn't do that."
As the dog was heading out of the car toward the officer, "we had yelled, begging them to let us get him, but the officer shot him," she said.
Grieving for their dog and in shock over their apparent arrest for some unknown crime, the family could only wait. At one point, one state trooper did tell them they "matched the description" in a robbery that had occurred in Davidson County, Pamela Smoak said.
The ordeal went on for a time after that, the family terrified and in grief over the dog.
Excerpted-Click here for complete account
ABSOLUTELY. It WAS a dangerous situation. Did the stopping officers TALK to the "busybody"? No, not likely. Did they have some "real facts" in the matter. No, they did not because they did not have the luxury you Monday morning quarterbacks have in know the preceeding events in the tragedy. They were operating with the LIMITED INFORMATION they had received from a dispatcher... who probably made a very bad judgement call.
Did they use improper procedure? Did they use excessive force? From the description of events from the family, I would really have to come down on the side of "No, they did not."
If you heard yelling and screaming at your neighbor's and called the cops, would they bust in and throw everyone in the house on the ground and handcuff them?...
If this was a situation where they possibly thought hostages were involved, why would they hold all 3 people at gunpoint and put them on the ground?
If on arrival at the scene the police STILL find yelling and screaming, a possible crime taking place and they cannot determine WHO is the agressor, they do indeed handcuff everyone until it can be sorted out. They cannot afford to make assumptions about who is perpetrator or who is the victim. Unless is already known who is who, then proper procedure is to secure EVERYBODY until it can be determined.
Would it be okay to shoot a dog there???
They can and will shoot a dog if it is necessary to secure the scene and restore order before someone is injured or killed. It happened in my area not too long ago. Dogs are considered chattel property under the law. They are not of primary importance if there is potential danger to a human being. If the dog is restrained, they should not and generally do not shoot. If the dog is just barking and not acting otherwise agressively, they do not shoot. But it there is a reasonable chance the dog could injure someone and TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE, then policy would allow them to kill the dog.
The cops will get a slap on the wrist and the woman that called is equally responsible for what happened and nothing, of course, will be done to her.
If the cops followed their training and procedure, then they do not even deserve a "slap on the wrist." They did their job. The woman who called saw something suspicious and reported it. She is not, nor should she be held liable.
Lilith, suppose what she saw WAS an actual crime taking place? Would you want her to decide NOT to call the police because she MIGHT get sued for everything she owns? This would be extremely BAD public policy. Citizens are EXPECTED to report suspicious activity to the police... it can be considered a CRIME not to report. In this case, what she saw was not a crime... but had it been, your attitude would 180 degrees reversed and you would be calling her a good citizen and possibly a heroine.
Naturally they cannot conceive of a situation where anyone in a government uniform can do anything wrong. Traumitize a totally innocent family for life, scar the children's psyches forever, so what? Who gives a damn?
Better a few terrorized peasants than the gestapo should take the slightest conceivable risk to themselves, ever.
Or as Orwell said "if you want to see the future, picture a boot on a human face, forever."
The sad thing is that some folks think of that and are cheered up by the prospect of THEIR boot on someone else's face.
Your are truly prescient. You anticipated these reponses... including the ad hominum attacks calling posters "Nazis", the imoputation of malevolent motives to purely practical and rational acts, and the mistaken emotional response rather than rational thinking.
Amazing. I wonder if any of these posters even bothered to read your link.
At Ruby Ridge the Weaver family dog Striker blew the cover of snipers, and was murder victim #1. At Waco the murder of the Davidian dogs was the clue that the raid was going down. There have been numerous cases posted on FR where at no-knock drug raids, dogs are shot, including some in which agression by the dogs was not mentioned - only the fact they were barking at officers. Shall I bump you to future threads in which dogs are shot by police with minimal provocation?
One more thing you're missing. Most police have their own families, and their own pets. They wouldn't take kindly to having their dog's head blown off in front of their family, handcuffed. It might seem macho to smirk at the sight of a 17 year old crying over his shot dog in the field. It won't be humorous at all back at the station.
I didn't miss that at all. But there's a gigantic double standard about treatment of dogs by the police vs. by us peasants.
Unfortunately, I was present on the Massilon Threads which lead to the creation of The Smokey Back Room Section of Free Republic last summer.
While you have offered a spirited, and in many aspects correct, defense of the officers actions, at some point a dialogue must begin about why these events occur with such great risk to all involved.
I suggest they most frequently occur because of a near total lack of education about the Constitution and the importance of the underlying principles.
For example: When you declare a WAR on drugs, it should not surprise anyone if a battlefield appears complete with a no-man's land, collateral damage, and heavily armed combatants on both sides.
There is simply no provision in the Constitution for a WAR on Drugs.
Many of the training programs currently in existence with their underlying (unConstitutional) philosophical underpinning attached began with the WAR on Drugs.
Men of good will on both sides of the issue are faced with a perplexing series of increasingly bad choices.
Do we strip search Grandma at the airport?
Are people guilty of anything at any time in their life forever branded as guilty of everything everywhere for the remainder of their life?
Police are Sovereign Citizens first, and "Law Enforcement" second.
They, as much as anyone else, (or maybe even more so)must speak out vigorously against unConstitutional "Law" foisted on them by politicians.
Otherwise, there will be a bloodbath and the politicians will win again. (Those that live!)
There are many points that SHOULD be discussed about this unfortunate situation,whether they WILL be discussed is another question altogether.
Best regards,
We don't know, based on this statement, how much time passed. Maybe everyone was handcuffed and they were working on reports, maybe not. That is what the courts will have to figure out.
No, you are just a chump if you think "proper police procedure" is a cure all.
They will use "proper police procedure" when they come for your guns one day too.....if you have any.
Cookeville Police Officer Eric Hall later defended his actions to the Herald-Citizen.
"A dog, I believe to be a pit-bull, jumped from the suspect vehicle, singled me out from the other officers, and charged toward me growling in an aggressive manner, Hall described.
"I yelled at the dog to 'get back' but it attempted to circle me to attack, so I felt that I had no other option but to protect myself. I fired once at the dog, instantly putting him down," he continued.
Well the dog didn't obey, so by procedure blow it away. My point, is that police procedure today is to have absolute total control and anything less is a threat and must be dealt with by force of some sort. To deny this, is to deny the police videos shown on TV.
There's a couple of things wrong with this statement.
1. Striker was shot by U.S. Marshalls conducting (what I believe was) an illegal reconnaisance of the Weaver residence. They were not snipers.
2. Striker's killing was not murder. There were two deaths in that exchange that even could be considered murder - Sam Weaver and U.S. Marshal William Degan. I'll leave it to you to decide who was killed first, and whether you agree with the legal decisions in both cases. But in no way will I ever support the killing of an animal (government owned or privately owned) equal to the illegal killing of a human (murder).
At Waco the murder of the Davidian dogs was the clue that the raid was going down.
Please provide your source for this. Again, dogs can not be murdered.
There have been numerous cases posted on FR where at no-knock drug raids, dogs are shot...
I am very pissed-off about the para-military, police-state mentality that has been on the rise since the late 60s. It needs to stop. The least of my worries are family pets. And I completely support a double standard between protections for military and police dogs, and privately owned pets. Their purpose in life requires it. What ticks me off is that people don't understand that individual police abuses are not the issue - it is not the "JBT" or disparate protections afforded to animals we should be worried about, it is our abdication of our rights as sheeple in favor of increasingly totalitarian police power.
You may enjoy re-reading Gerry Spence's letter, from which I quote:
Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed, first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf. We did not care about the weak or about the strays. They were not a part of the flock. We did not care about those on the outer edges. They had chosen to be there. But as the wolf worked its way towards the center of the flock we discovered that we were now on the outer edges. Now we must look the wolf squarely in the eye. That we did not do so when the first of us was ripped and torn and eaten was the first wrong. It was our wrong.
You may also enjoy reading Police Power: Sovereignty's Sledgehammer.
I am not a friend of "baby killer" anti-military wackos, or "jack booted thugs" anti-police wackos.
There's a no room in my hate filled heart for them, it's full already.
Especially to Cover their asses.
These people quite literally believe that right and wrong has nothing whatsoever to do with what is done, but instead is entirely about who does it. Nothing, not one conceivable thing, done by a cop could ever be wrong to them. Cops could shoot every Jew they see, and they would cheer, not because they're anti-Semites (although if their beloved authority figures started disliking Jews, they'd outdo Hitler), but because cops did it. Therefore it's right.
America's not much better than this.
I want posterity to forget they were ever called Americans, but I can't bring myself to wish for their chains to rest lightly. May their chains be heavy enough to break their bones, but only if the decent people of the country are free.
Forgive me. Government agents (1)hidden (2)armed with rifles (3)lying in wait (as opposed to passing through) may well not be "snipers". Perhaps you can understand why I used the word.
2. Striker's killing was not murder. ... because a dog is not a person. Fine. Terminated with extreme prejudice. Even if the procedure isn't written down (in a place where us peasants without a need-to-know security clearance can find it), the standard operating procedure seems to be that if a dog represents any nusaince to LEOs during the course of their business, the dogs are killed.
It seems you like to dwell on semantic arguments, "sniper" and "murder" and "SOP" being something written down and disclosed to the general public. But you appear to be trying to avoid my points by focussing on the semantics.
Please provide your source for [the killing of the Davidian's dogs].
Agents Shot Dogs
The Davidians kept five family dogs--Fawn, Bear, Bandit, Wolfie and Rascal--in a pen to the west side of the front door. Even though none of the dogs were vicious, BATF's original plan was to shoot the dogs if they could not be subdued--even if Davidians surrendered immediately. Once the gunfire started, agents testified to shooting at dogs they thought were trying to escape from the pen.42/ One aerial photo taken right after the raid shows a line of five dead dogs in the front yard.43/EVIDENCE BATF SHOT FIRST
The original BATF plan for ground agents was that while helicopters created a diversion, one team of three agents would smash through the front door while another team of three agents would spray a fire extinguisher at or, if necessary shoot, the dogs in the dog pen near the front door.
Source.
I am very pissed-off about the para-military, police-state mentality that has been on the rise since the late 60s. It needs to stop. The least of my worries are family pets.
I'm not "worried" about family pets, rather I'm angry at the callous disregard LEOs hold for family pets, and scared at the implications of having such callous people wield the awesome power of The State.
And I completely support a double standard between protections for military and police dogs, and privately owned pets. Their purpose in life requires it.
If the caste system can be kept to the level of dogs, it wouldn't be so bad. But there are proposals to make killing a police dog more criminal than killing one of us peasants, and that really ticks me off. However, I can't find any that have been enacted yet.
What ticks me off is that people don't understand that individual police abuses are not the issue - it is not the "JBT" or disparate protections afforded to animals we should be worried about, it is our abdication of our rights as sheeple in favor of increasingly totalitarian police power.
Well we are largely in agreement there, though I see JBTs as evidence of the descent, while you somehow dismiss people who use the term. Maybe my JBT is your paramilitary LEO, and we don't disagree so much after all.
Great quote, by the way, and thanks for the references.
Beyond that, what do you suppose is the reason for showing these videos? Entertainment or intimidation?
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.