That’s always been the law in Vermont. Our murder rate is quite low.
Yes, he is. None of us can be expected to understand all the dynamics of a dangerous situation that suddenly arises, yet we must choose how to respond despite our ignorance. Really, you might as well say that I’m not justified in shooting someone coming at me with a knife, because if I thoroughly understood his background I could talk him out of using the knife.
I hope some third party witnesses show up, but in lack of anything to the contrary we have to accept the word of the only eyewitnesses, the cop’s family. And my guess is that there won’t be any other witnesses. The cop probably fired that much becaused he missed a lot (remember- small, running, lunging), and there was nobody downrange to worry about hitting.
But we’re all doing a lot of guessing here, so let me guess further. One guess is that if it took 8 or 9 shots to put down that dogs, surely the first 1 or 2 would have sufficed as “warning” shots. And by the way, are we all sure that a dog understands the concept of a “warning” shot? I’m somewhat doubtful on that issue.
I’m not surprised. Most predators avoid prey that might maul them. [/hijack]
–SSgtBaloo
So much for this being the incredibly Rare isolated incident that unfairly portrays dogs as dangerous… :rolleyes:
Ahem.
Dogs can be dangerous. Only a fool says otherwise.
There are many fools in this world.
In Philadelphia, PA, the city in which I’ve lived in or near all my life, police summarily execute obviously mentally ill persons a few times each year.
The type of incident I mean is almost always the same: Police intervene when some deranged person is raving in a threatening manner; sometimes the raver is brandishing a real weapon, e.g. a knife, but it might just be a broken bottle. Invariably the person fails to respond to police commands-- barked, bellowed, or cooed-- to relax, calm down, drop the object, etc. Sometimes, though not always, the raver actually attacks the police-- but even if the raver just fails to become docile, BANG! BANG! Too bad-- how sad.
I share this apparent tangent, which probably deserves a thread of its own, because the way I feel about the executed raver(s) seems to be the way the “pro-dog” (for lack of a better term) posters feel about the poor dead doggie.
I side with those, too numerous to cite individually, who find the shooter’s actions justified, given the obligatory caveats that we don’t really know what happened, we’re relying on hearsay info, etc. It happens that I don’t care for dogs, don’t have an affinity for them, however you want to put it. I’ve often wondered if this is a nature/nurture phenomenon. Neither of my parent’s families were dog owners, we didn’t own one or beg our parents to acquire one, etc. Ergo, my childhood exposure to dogs was indirect & limited. Flipper, a gentle, friendly dog, lived next door and was OK with me. The little wiener dog that the cigar-smoking man up the street would take by evenings to excrete on our front lawn while the cigar-smoker stared into the sky, puffing smoke, didn’t endear itself to me.
Anyway, I didn’t plan to grow up with an abiding detachment, coolness, and a vague apprehension/faint repugnance towards canines. I’ve never been bitten, or more than menaced in passing by a dog, but I’ve certainly been aggravated and offended by dog-owners’ moronic presumption that I should cheerfully be subjected to having their dog, uninvited, thrust its head into my crotch or drool all over my knee. I grinned and bore it, but such experiences and years of watching “Judge Judy” type shows convinces me that dog owners relate to dogs as if they are essentially persons. They’re prone to become upset, irrational, and defensive if the world doesn’t accord their pooch the respect & empathy it deserves.
I don’t begrudge dog-lovers their right to exist. I ramble thus to note that not all of us invest dogs with personality, or character, as the disapproving dog-loving posters here clearly do. Put another way, we don’t have the interest in, or affection for, dogs that inspires the willingness or desire to learn their ways and develop habits of high-quality interaction.
Thus, though I indeed think it’s a shame that the dog was killed, I think it’s preposterous to fault the shooter for responding with fear, even hostility, to the presence of an unsupervised and literally out of control canine. If dogs run free, don’t blame the victim.
In my home town the Chief of Police was driving up the road when he happened to see a big-ass German Shepard chasing a kid on a bike, apparently with intent to bite. So, said Chief lowers his window, points his gun out and empties it on the dog. Eye-witnesses said that A) The kid was screaming bloody murder for several minutes after the shooting, and B) The officer’s aim was so poor that while he certainly stopped the dog, he did not kill it, despite unloading his firearm at it. The dog was euthanized at a local vet’s office.
The Chief nearly lost his job over this because he acted like a moron. The dog did not present a clear deadly threat to the child, while a stray bullet most certainly did. The officer could have easily subdued the dog with mace or his nightstick.
Some trigger-happy cop shooting nine slugs into a dog in a public park sounds about on par with the above story: Excessive, and not worth the risk to bystanders. Use of a firearm should be restricted to situations where a clear need for deadly force is demonstrable. Any grown man can subdue a dog if needed, without putting others at risk, and a cop should be trained in hand-to-hand physical defense and restraint. A gun was not necessary. I can only imagine the shooting was at close range, and the target was no more than several feet from his child. Idiot. Bullets can pass right through flesh and ricochet off rocks and other objects. They can also fragment on bone and send shards flying in all directions. He’s lucky his child wasn’t injured or possibly killed by shrapnel. Pointing the gun at the owner only further demonstrates the officer’s inability to make proper judgements in a high-stress situation. This, if you ask me, is fucking scary, given that this guy is in law enforcement.
**Cartooniverse and Qadgop the Mercotan **
Yeah I guess I’m what you would call “pro-dog”.
So how come dogs become a little “funny in the head” shall we say?
A great many times a dangerous dog is produced because it is really popular and if it gets a super macho vicious reputation, some “nut-case” people actually want that in a dog and similar “nut-case” folks breed those traits into those dogs. In the 20th century some breeds that were recklessly bred at one time or another were the German Shepherd, the Doberman, the Pit Bull, the Rottweiller and who knows what next.
Since the story you cited is about Pit Bulls, it would not surprise me in the least if they were bred to be “killing machines”. And judging by that story, it seems the dog owner, would be the type that would want that kind of dog. The guy seems to be a “Grade-A” Jerk. He told the letter carrier, who was trying to save his son, to get off of his property. Seems he was also charged with drug and firearms violations. Not exactly a solid civic-minded citizen is he?
I will admit that dogs will sometimes attack and mostly I’d say it is due to reckless breeding OR severe abuse/mishandling by the owner. (and that guy seems he might be just a “tad” abusive in general).
And it seems you folks think that this dog biting/mauling/killing behavior is rather common. Think about this. What about the drunk driver deaths caused each year? How about kids overdosing on heroin, ecstasy and who knows what else? I would say that in comparison to other ways of getting injured or killed, dogs are not the biggest problem. No, I am not trying to minimize the fact that dogs do kill people. I’m just trying to put a little perspective on it.
As I’ve said in other postings, feel free to pounce.
wolf_meister: What about them? What about the nearly daily deaths going on in Iraq? What about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, etc.? What the heck does any of this have to do with this thread’s topic?
And I don’t understand why you’re taking Qadgop the Mercotan to task. He simply stated “dogs can be dangerous”. Do you contest that statement?
FTR, I’m a dog owner. I love my dog. Do I hold such blind faith that I could never see my dog biting someone? Absolutely not.
Wow this thread is just all coming together. Interesting. Okay, first of all a dog chasing a child doesn’t post a clear deadly threat? You’d prefer to withold that judgement until after the dog has gnawed off the child’s face. Nice show of restraint on your part… heaven knows we wouldn’t want to impugne the good name of an animal at the expense of a child’s safety…
Little Brother, ( sorry I cannot figure out how to make the crossed O thingy ), I grew up in Philadelphia too. Allow me to share a tale. My first dog attack. I was 5. The Philadelphia Police Officer who lived several doors down let his dog run. A lot. It was the kind of typical German Shepard used as K-9 dogs by many forces, certainly by that force at that time. I had been brought up to never approach, or touch, or talk to a dog. Why? CAUSE THEY’RE DANGEROUS, DUMMY. This Police Dog went after me like a rocket. Down his lawn, up the sidewalk towards me, snarling and growling and barking. I did two things fast. I ran up the front bumper of my best friends’ parents Bonneville, up onto the hood and up onto the roof. In sneakers on a hot summer’s day, I made it without slipping.
The dog was frantic, it wanted at me so badly. It never made it past the bumper. It did try, and try and try and try and try and try and try and try. Did I mention how relentlessly it tried? Okay, good. It tried leaping up from the side door too. The net effect was an incredible amount of scraping damage to the car’s front and side door panels. Additionally, I stood there screaming nonstop while I wet my pants. Eventually my best friend’s mom saw me out her window, and did what she thought was the smart thing. She ran to get the Cop who owned the dog.
He dragged the dog into the house, and my second Mom got me to my house. My parents went to see the Cop that evening when Dad got home. They were informed in extremely plain language that if they fucking dared to open their mouths and file ANY kind of a complaint, they would regret it.
So, they let it go. Welcome to Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia, circa 1967… betcha dollars to donuts that not one thing has changed.
At any rate, wolf_meister said
. That guy might or might not have been. You gonna be the one to walk up to a Philadelphia Police offier with both dog AND firearm in tow and inform them that they’re not civic-minded? -smirk- Go for it.
Why is it that this is so difficult for many posters here to just up and admit. THESE ARE ANIMALS. Go ahead, say it. Roll it around your incisors a while. They are unpredictable and driven by needs humans love to think they control and understand, but obviously do not.
Kind of sad.
Mole
Had you quoted the rest of that paragraph, you would heve seen exactly what I meant. Yes, dogs can be very dangerous. I was just trying to put their danger in perspective. (The number of people killed by drunk drivers, drug overdoses, etc exceeds the chances of being killed by a dog).
Still, I think the officer was irresponsible in pulling that trigger. Letter carriers face a far greater danger of a dog attack but they deal with it in a non-lethal manner. (Look at that pit-bull story). Tell me something mole - if that were NOT a police officer that had done the shooting, would that citizen have been treated the same way? Would he have been “booked”, fined, made to appear in court, etc? Would his right to carry a firearm be revoked?
Cartooniverse
Since I just posted a reply (while you were typing yours) I’ll just answer yours by stating that when a police officer is involved with an incident such as this, isn’t prosecution very difficult to seek? I think you know this to be very true since you said:
Granted the New Hampshire incident is not 1960’s Philadelphia, but don’t you think the officer is going to get a “pass” on this? I sure do.
Also Cartooniverse, here’s how to make the Ø. Hold down the ALT Key and at the same time type 0216. Should you wish to make a lower-case ø then it is ALT and 0248. Want to know about typing other special characters? Go to:
http://www.1728.com/altchar.htm
You completely and convienently ignore both the officer’s demeanor (pointing his firearm at the owner) and the fact he emptied his gun a public place, where stray bullets or bullet fragments could have easily injured or killed innocent bystanders, including his own child. This kind of hair-trigger and deadly reaction from an officer of the law, given the nature of the threat and the cost-benefit analysis he clearly lacked at the time, does nothing to assuage the fears many have that a significant percentage of police officers are irresponsible and dangerous. Having lived in Washington DC for four years, I got to see at close-range how this is not a trivial concern.
One would think that a police officer would be trained to quickly size up a threat and respond appropriately, taking into account both the nature of the risk and the potential consequences of his/her reaction to that risk. Even off-duty, I think the onus is on law-enforcement to eminently display these skills. I was a paper boy, I got chased and bitten by dogs. Sometimes big ones. While certainly frightening, my experiences were never approaching deadly, nor are those of the vast majority of people who have such encounters. Certainly deadly animal attacks do occur, but they are exceedingly rare (considering the number of dogs in this country). The simple truth is virtually all dog attacks can be mitigated by non-deadly force. Police, who work with large dogs sometimes trained to attack, should know this as well as anyone.
Having strong objections, in my mind, isn’t about cruelty to animals, dog love, putting pets before people, or any other such nonsense. I also don’t believe it’s about understimating the threat. It’s about a what looks very much like a cop showing poor judgement in using a firearm, and hence endangering others. That the dog was dead or not in the end doesn’t concern me. It’s that other people could well have been. You don’t go shooting a powerful handgun in a public park, with other people around, eight times, in rapid succession, unless you have a supremely good reason, and this just doesn’t qualify.
Um. Loopydude? The quote of yours that I used a few hours ago was from the story you related a few posts up from mine. Um…it wasn’t about the O.P. of this thread, ok?
Again, you state the child was in no danger. Got kids? The next time your child is being directly attacked by a dog, should we presume that you will stop for a few minutes and ponder what the politically correct response will be? One that is fair and just to the dog, yet won’t frighten the child, nor put you in the way of a tricky lawsuit? I admire your focus, to be sure.
I’ve zero love, and I do mean zero love of both cops and guns and in the case of the story about the Chief in his car, shooting FROM the car, my god. Irresponsible. He might have been wiser to exit the car quickly, and run towards the dog.
It only would have taken one bullet then, and the risk of stray shots would have been lowered significantly.
And, the dog would still be dead. See? We all get to formulate scenarios we approve of…
Loopydude
In your story about the bicycle rider being chased by a “vicious” German Shepherd, you said the Chief nearly lost his job because of this. But he didn’t did he? Again, the police getting away with another bad judgment.
I also rarely trust Chows, and though I don’t own a herding dog, nor do I claim to have more knowledge than you, I was wondering about statements like this:
It’s from a .pdf file, but you can find it here.
You seem to be agreeing with what was written above in the next part I quote, but didn’t say anything about nipping, so wondered what your thoughts were. I realize that this behavior can be corrected, but just like your statement about Chows, do you think the majority of owners are as responsible as you?
I also think that a lot of responsibility is placed on children to know how to react toward a dog in this thread. I am not against education, and admire you for what you do. However as an example:
I lived in a neighborhood with more than one aggressive dog. The newest addition, seemed to exhibit the same behaviors as the other two (all separate owners) - if we (kids) walked by the houses, the dog would leave the yard and bark, growl, with ears pinned and hair raised. Most of us knew to walk slowly and quietly away from the dog, and it worked most of the time. However the two dogs that we were used to were pretty small. The newer dog was a German Shepherd. My friend while walking by, apparently could not maintain the calm needed to keep things in balance and ran, on a lone encounter. She still has large scars on the backs of her legs from running. I understand that the likelihood of her being bitten would have been less, had she not run, and see the importance of education. Education can only do so much, and a dog that had never bitten before, bites. Knowing how a breed is supposed to behave, doesn’t tell me much about the dog’s owners, and what precautions/corrections they’ve made to negative behavior, if any.
I see you saying the dad possibly acted out of ignorance, for not understanding the breed. I think it was out of ignorance, but think it had more to do with ignorance of the owner’s training. I wouldn’t put much trust in the owner, if the dog was unleashed in a leash required park. I realize you do hold the owner responsible in this thread, I feel where we disagree is giving the benefit of the doubt. I’ve experienced poorly trained dogs more often than well trained ones, so my judgement in a situation like this would be biased toward the former. I do believe your dogs are well trained, but like the Chows and little terriers you mention, I’ve seen quite the opposite with other owners.
No, he didn’t. This guy, an Officer Planche, had a history of incompetence that stretched back a decade or more, and I think many hoped the dog incident was the last straw. But it was up to the town council (this is a small Maine town we’re talking about), which was largely comprised of some dyed-in-the-wool townies who resented a lot of the yuppification of our fair hamlet. When Chief Planche took out a telephone pole, and totalled his cruiser in the process (purportedly DUI) a few years earlier, they pretty much looked the other way then, too. I guess they just liked the guy, I don’t know. To the town board’s credit, they did a better job of getting votes out of their supporters than the newer blood, who complained bitterly about Planche and about them, but rarely got involved deeply enough in local politics to affact change. So, anyway, officer Planche got a reprimand and some unpaid leave, I think, but kept his job, despite the fact that the incident became something of a regional scandal. As with most of these things, it was forgotten fairly quickly. Very little changes in a timely manner where I’m from.
I’ve treated children who have been attacked by dogs, cats, ferrets, raccoons, and people. Many times over the decades.
Animals can be dangerous. So can people.
As I said before, I don’t know what really went down well enough to play the should’ve/could’ve game. In absence of such information, I will give the parent protecting children the benefit of the doubt. Especially since the primary fault was the dog owner who did not keep his dog leashed as required.
QtM, MD and lifelong dog owner.
Loopydude
Thanks for the update on that irresponsible Police Chief. Needless to say I was not surprised that he is still on the job. It seems police are given too much leeway.
Let me remind everyone of what the story said. The officer had one child in his arms and another hiding behind his legs. How well can you fight a dog in that position?
And yes, we are trained in “hand-to-hand physical defense”. I have NOT been trained in “hand-to-paw” defense. In all of my years of law enforcement, I have never seen a class offered in how to fight a dog. The fact that I can fight a man really doesn’t automatically mean that I can fight a dog with one hand and guarantee that one of those children wouldn’t be hurt.
If the officer were on-duty, he would have other options available (baton, mace/pepper spray, maybe a TASER). In this situation, he only had his hands (one of which was completely occupied holding a child) and his firearm. Or, he could just let the dog take a piece out of him or one of his kids.
uh, what kind of exploding bullets do you think this guy was carrying? Yeah, a few flecks of debris might come off of a bullet hitting something, but not deadly shrapnel.