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To: viligantcitizen
... 40 minutes later ...

Try 40 seconds, even better, try watching the video!

At 17:20:10 on the tape, a THP officer moves up to the driver's side of the "suspect" vehicle and shines his flashlight into the car. At the same time, Mr. Smoaks tells the officers that he has dogs in the car. At this point, the THP officer should have seen the dogs as well. It was his duty at that time to recognize the danger these dogs posed to highway traffic and the safety of the officers and "suspects" - and contain the dogs. Failure to do so led to Patton, coming out of the car. This was NOT following proper procedure and should be shown in a civil suit as negligence.

At 17:20:30 Mr. Smoaks clearly says he has dogs in the car and doesn't want them jumping out. At this time the officer who had approached the vehicle (I'd like to know which THP officer this was - I'm betting Lt. Jerry Andrews) was shining his flashlight down on Mr. Smoaks hands as a second THP officer was cuffing him and the third THP officer had cuffed Mrs. Smoaks and was now cuffing their son. There is no reason this officer could not, and should not, have secured the dogs in the car.

Patton comes out of the car soon after Mr. Smoaks second warning, 17:20:35, perhaps 15 seconds after the THP officer should have identified the dogs and secured them. It was this negligence and improper procedure that led to Patton being shot.

371 posted on 01/09/2003 8:34:45 PM PST by optimistically_conservative
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To: optimistically_conservative
The THP officer who shone the light into the car also asked what kind of dog this was (or what kind of dogs these were).

To me that shows they knew about the dogs and should have closed the door, but it also shows they were concerned about the dogs as a threat.

388 posted on 01/09/2003 9:50:37 PM PST by palmer
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To: optimistically_conservative; Diddle E. Squat
A poster on another thread pointed this out to me, but thanks for alerting me to my error.
391 posted on 01/09/2003 9:58:34 PM PST by Vigilantcitizen (Reading comprehension is a good thing.)
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