To be fair, the video only shows the dog for the first second or so, as it’s going away from the car and road, not once it had circled back. It doesn’t show what it was doing off-camera, and the only thing we can tell at that point is that it was very close when the officer fired (By the angle of the gun when he shot).
True, but the dog sounds were not threatening and not much time had elapsed from the dog hopping around wagging it’s tail. Also, given that the officer claimed the dog was a vicious Pit Bull- which it plainly isn’t either vicious or a pit bull- I’m less inclined to believe his version of the story.
I don’t think the officer who fired deserves all of the blame. The officer who looked inside, said “there’s a dog”, then left the door open deserves more of the blame. The lying bitch who called 911 and gave the police wrong information deserves even more of the blame. If the police weren’t going on such an extremely exaggerated story they would have been less likely to overreact.
I have seen the video and it is very disturbing. I think the screams from the family are just as bad as the actual shooting of the dog. The repeated screams and crys are enough to run a shiver down your spine. This family will live with that forever. And the kids having to see this unfold is something that will forever be etched in their minds. That is tragic.
I wanted to watch the video before I weighed in on this. After watching the video, the Smoaks were lucky that they weren’t shot as well. If a dog can be shot for not understanding “Get back!”, then the driver was lucky because there was more than one instance where he forgot to keep his hands up.
I am disgusted by the excuses being made for the officer. I don’t understand why all debates about police misconduct degenerate into this.
Criticism of one cop is not a criticism of all cops. I would think that in this instance all reasonable people can agree that the officers over-reacted to an anonymous phone call. They over-reacted in the felony stop of a middle aged couple and their teenage son driving in a station wagon loaded with luggage and two family dogs. The office over-reacted in shooting the dog.
People have chimed in that a lot of people would have acted the same way in the same situation. Police work is dangerous. Yeah… that’s true, but what’s your point. Strangely, I expect trained professionals to be more proficient at their jobs, than I would be doing their jobs. That goes for any field of work.
I expect a professionally trained pilot not to panic when he loses an engine. I expect a professionally trained life guard not to over react when there is a young child drowning. I expect a professionally trained police officer not to over-react when a dog runs up to him.
My heart goes out to the Smoaks family for having to watch their dog blown away.
I already told you: Their stories were contradictory. Both could not be true. The case was a guy they busted for drugs. The cops were questioned separately and their stories could not be more contradictory if they tried. One said they had been following and observing the defendant for a while; the other said they had first seen him where he was arrested. Their stories of how things happened after that were completely contradictory and so, both could not be true. The guys were not only perjurers but had not even bothered to agree beforehand on what the story was. even the judge mentioned their lack of credibility and dismissed the case against the defendant.
The prosecution said in the beginning they only needed one officer. It was a brilliant move on the part of the defense attorney to keep both officers and ask them to testify separately. Seeing that two cases that morning were dismissed for the same reason (the cops were clearly making up their stories) and that the attorney told me that is what routinely happens, then, yes, I do believe cops lie pretty frequently. The attorney told me he routinely crossquestions cops because it is so easy to catch them lying. I do not know if this is specific for DC but I would not be surprised if it were widespread.
And, getting back to the OP, the cops actions are inexcusable and I hope the victims are awarded an amount which puts the city in bankruptcy.
Could you elaborate? I’m not familair with the sayings of Mayor Daley.
If a police dog did not respond to voice commands and injured someone wrongfully, the police department would be liable and the dog should be destroyed. Dogs should be properly trained, as I have said before. Nobody needs to care how the police would view it; the courts are damn likely to see a tort and every lawyer in the county would start to salivate.
** They weren’t gagged - dogs are trained to respond to voice commands.
That having been said, isn’t it convenient that we can apply our critical thinking to the situation - weeks after the fact, after all the consequences are known and with access to information that the police did not have, and with all the time in the world to think it over - and no dogs running towards us?
Who do you think deals with more criminals who have trained their dogs to defend their drug stash - the Post Office, or the police? And what reason did the police have to believe that this was not a felony arrest?
And who do you think gets bit more - the postman who assumes that every dog running at him is friendly, or the one who assumes it is not?
In a felony bust, a dog attacking you is an attack dog. And yes, assuming the people you are in the process of arresting, and about whom you have received a 911 call describing them as felons, are possibly dangerous, seems like a good idea to me.
As I have said, unavoidably but unfortunately, all discussion of this case has to happen with knowledge that the police didn’t have. They didn’t know that the people being arrested were innocent. They didn’t know that the dog wasn’t really attacking. They didn’t know they weren’t in danger.
All they did know was that some people were going to call them pigs and liars. Because they aren’t perfect.
Gotta get some work done.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - I think the quote from Mayor Daley was -
“The police aren’t there to create disorder. The police are there to preserve disorder.”
Richard J Daley after the convention (paraphrase):
The police are not ther to create disorder. The police are there to preserve disorder.
Regarding the officer’s choice of commands - on the occasions that I have backed down aggressive dogs, I have concentrated less on my word choice, than on my tone and posture. IME, “Get back” if delivered properly, would have every chance of success as sit, stay, down, or any other command. For some reason, “Go home” has come to my lips in such situations - and has worked. Tho I doubt many folk train their dogs to “go home”. Heck, he might have been better simply growling at it.
Tooting my own horn - I must say I’m a little pleased of my pun in the Pit thread - where I thought it more approproate than GD.
We’re talking about a family pet. It’s owners are kneeling on the ground, and people are walking around flashing torches. How much does it surprise you that the dog ran around, tail wagging, wondering what the game was.
Just tell me what the family did wrong that this treatment was justified. The police are there to protect, not to assault people lawfully minding their own business.
I really, just really do not understand how you can watch this incident and see anything other than a hamfisted, idiotically managed farce ending in a hideously cruel finale. How can you justify the application of such stupidity and overkill to a situation that was clearly in hand?
Gary - I remember having a discussion with an older cop a couple of years back. I was talking about what I perceived as an “attitude” on behalf of more cops these days, as opposed to my memories from years back. For example, I feel as though I am often more likely to be treated gruffly for minor indiscretions or brushed off when requesting assistance in the upper middle class suburb where I presently live and pay taxes, than when I was a kid living in (and occasionally pushing the limits of the law) in Chicago. Sure, most cops I encounter are still pleasant to me, but it really is a shock when a cop in our quiet burg treats me rudely. In some respects, they act as tho they are far more important and stressed than the very low crime rates would appear to justify.
In this cop’s opinion, he had perceived a shift in the focus of police activity in recent years. I always recalled the motto “To serve and protect.” This cop told me there is a different attitude if a cop see that as his function, as opposed to "law enforcement."
In the past couple of years I have thought that such a shift in focus, if true, would explain a lot.
Note, a whole slew of factors by a whole slew of parties could have contributed to this shift in focus.
I think of it like this:
People make mistakes all the time. Unfortunately, multiple mistakes were made in this case. Poor judgement and itchy trigger fingers just don’t mix. That combo routinely results in innocent people getting shot, as well as innocent animals.
The cops that made these mistakes don’t need to be defended. Nor do they need to be crucified and sodomized with red hot pokers. They just need to punished fairly and turned into examples for teaching purposes. Other cops could probably learn a lot from this episode, and that’s probably the only silver lining to this cloud. Maybe Cookeville can take this as a sign that they need to bone up their “what to do when you’re confronted with strange dogs” training procedure. Let’s hope some good can come out of this.
I sympathize with the Smoake family. Hearing about this story almost made me cry. I have a soft spot for bull doggies.
Shodan, your claims about dogs are laughable. Oh yes, I’m a very strong beleiver that dog owners should have their dogs under control at all times, and mine responds very well to voice commands.
But you hold up police dogs as the gold standard for how dogs can be controlled. They’re wonderful working dogs, but have you ever seen them in a real life, tense situation? You seem to think that the handler yells one command like “Stop!” or “Sit!” or whatever, and the dog instantly goes from full speed attack to complete compliance. It just doesn’t happen that way. In many cases, the handler ends up yelling the command several times and sometimes has to pull the dog off. That doesn’t mean the dog isn’t well trained and well handled, it just means that in real life situations with everyone (including the dog) excited and adrenaline flowing, noises and other distractions, it’s unrealistic to think that a shouted command will get an instant reaction.
Which is all a long explanation for why it’s silly to try to blame the family in this instance because they didn’t stop the dog. Even if they had instantly reacted by shouting for the dog (and God only knows how the cops would have reacted to that), it’s not likely the dog would have complied quickly enough to avoid being shot.
(By the way, could God create a dog so big that even he could not control it?)
What reason did the police have to believe this was a felony arrest?
When they found the car it was driving at a reasonable speed and there was no money flying all over the road. No one had called in a robbery. The people in the car didn’t look disturbed or disturbing. Don’t the police have eyes? Anyone assessing the scene for even 10 seconds would have realized that it wasn’t as the 911 call indicated.
Of course they needed to pull the car over. But I don’t see why they believed there had actually been a felony commited much less why they thought the people in the car might be dangerous.
“Law and Order” types are scary. When they become cops they become terrifying. No punishment is sufficient for them. The government never has enough power to “protect us”. Gawd help us all and deliver us from these people.
Not absolutely sure, but I’m betting it’s not the police force of Cookeville, TN.
Well, that’s the understatement of the thread right there.
If they were perfect, they wouldn’t have pulled these people over to begin with. If they were perfect, the dog never would have gotten out of the car.
When cops aren’t perfect, people and dogs die.
—And who do you think gets bit more - the postman who assumes that every dog running at him is friendly, or the one who assumes it is not?—
So, postmen should carry guns, and shoot any dogs they encounter that show any interest in them… just to be safe?
I just want to clarify that I believe someone said the dog was running loose for three seconds, Shodan.
Even if your dog was an award winner that responded to commands IMMEDIATELY, you can barely get the words “Barney, get down” in three seconds.
I’ll add another two cents here.
According to CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/09/police.kill.dog/
So the dog was heading back in the general direction of its owners after they called to it, but that also happened to be in the general direction of the officers. The dog was obeying until it was dictracted by someone yelling and shining a flashlight on it. If you watch the video the officer with the gun was backstepping away from the dog fairly quickly. Any fool knows that a dog will instinctivly chase you if you run from it, particulary if the dog is playing. If the officer would have not been moving and used a stern voice the dog would have stopped no matter what he said.
I still think most of the blame should be put on whoever decided that this situation required a felony stop on the one phone call when there was no other information that any robberby or other crime had been committed.
It looks like their site is either down or too busy now, but IIRC, the Cookeville police dept. got the call from the state police, so they were hearing it thirdhand. It was like a game of “telephone” but with much uglier results- I believe they had a statement on their website where they literally called it “a failure to communicate”.
But if you close the car doors you don’t even have to worry about the dog attacking anyone. My guess is that they assumed the family had done something wrong and weren’t going to listen to what they said, either because they don’t like to be told what to do, or because they thought they were criminals and might have an ulterior motive for having them close the car doors. Or a combination of both.
In other words, much too fast for the police to dig out their pepper spray or get the chief of police on the radio and ask, “Hey boss - what’s SOP when confronting a strange, apparently aggressive dog?” And much too fast to think up a lot of options after the dog doesn’t respond to the first command that occurs to you.
No, policemen should carry guns, and shoot any dogs they encounter that seem to be attacking them. Just to be safe.
So the police should be able to tell at a glance who is dangerous, and who is not. When they do that with black folks, it’s called “racial profiling”. Is this what you suggest? The people were white. So the police should assume everything is fine?
So the police get a 911 call about a guy breaking into a house. They drive to the address, see that it is a white neighborhood, and that none of the doors or windows have been broken. Are you saying the police should shrug their shoulders, assume that the 911 call was an over-reaction, and leave without bothering the obviously innocent home-owners?
If you are arguing that an attacking dog will probably not respond instantly to voice commands, you are likely to be right. But that means that if the police thought the dog was attacking, they were entirely right in shooting the dog. After all, even a trained police dog doesn’t always break off the attack on command. Other dogs are even less likely to obey in the midst of an attack.
And if the dog wasn’t attacking, why would it not respond to command? Because it wasn’t trained? In other words, the owners did not have control of the animal, and again, the police eliminated the threat in the only way available.
The people did nothing to deserve to be arrested. But the way that the police protect is by arresting people who deserve to be arrested.
Again, you are applying a standard to the behavior of the police which is inappropriate given the information available at the time.
Were the people actually dangerous? No - but the police did not know that at the time.
Was the dog attack-trained and guarding a drug stash or something? No - but the police did not know that at the time.
Was the 911 call accurate? No - But the police did not know that at the time.
The standard seems to be that police should never be wrong. They should never stop the wrong people, they should never act on wrong information, they should be able to tell at a glance which dogs running towards them are dangerous and which are not. No matter what, they should always assume that everyone with whom they interact has their best interests at heart.
Feel free to push in that direction if you like. It seems like a pretty ridiculous standard to me, but YMMV.
And when they make mistakes the other way and die, you can go to the police funeral and comfort the widow with the reflection that no dogs were hurt.
Regards,
Shodan