What Dog Shootings Reveal About American Policing

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/what-dog-shootings-reveal-about-american-policing/533319/?single_page=true

by curtis • 9 years ago

85 115 9 years ago

theatlantic.com

fennecfoxen• 9 years ago

See also: https://puppycidedb.com/

Or if you just want tales of stupidity, Reason has a nice collection http://reason.com/tags/puppycide (if you don't mind the typical Reason editorial positions, and the tone of its coverage). Sample: "Cops Open Gate, Letting Dog Loose, Kill Dog, Cite Owner for Having Dog Loose, Lawsuit Alleges"

leesalminen3• 9 years ago

This bothers me. One of my dogs (Australian Cattle Dog) is very protective of her home. Although she behaves very well at others' homes, in public and in cars, once at home she will attempt to "heel" strangers away from the house. She can appear very intimidating.

I could easily see a police officer shooting her. The thing is, I like that my dog is protective of her home. It's really comforting to know that if, by chance, I forget to lock my door she will absolutely not allow a stranger to enter.

sliverstorm2• 9 years ago

I could easily see a police officer shooting her. The thing is, I like that my dog is protective of her home.

If you choose to encourage your dog to use violence to protect your home, IMO any consequences are on you. Would it be any different, if you shot an intruder without following the rules of engagement?

leesalminen3• 9 years ago

I think you don't understand what "heeling" is. It's not "violent".

Furthermore, dogs (at least mine) do indeed have rules of engagement. They attempt to identify who is entering their home, assess their body language and "vibes" and then make a decision as to what needs to be done.

I trust my dogs. Having them around greatly reduces the likeliness of me ever having to resort to real violence (you know, where death is involved).

mmanfrin• 9 years ago

  The Nation has noted a Department of Justice estimate of 
  10,000 dogs per year killed by police.

What in the fuck.

gorbachev• 9 years ago

From the article:

"Last year, Reason dug up records showing that two Detroit police officers had killed 100 dogs between them over the course of their careers."

If you were to consider your pets as just property, that's going to amount to quite a lot of property damage alone.

bluedino2• 9 years ago

Detroit has thousands of dogs roaming the city, in packs.

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/10/detroits...

They kill other dogs, attack people, they are a huge nuisance.

maxxxxx• 9 years ago

These guys really seem to operate like an occupying force, not police.

DINKDINK• 9 years ago

People with guns who demand your money and property and want people not in their clique to have property or guns.

vkou• 9 years ago

Internal affairs will take an officer's word over that of a bystander in a homicide. Why would they do anything different when a dog dies?

StavrosK6• 9 years ago

I was just about to say I can't understand why police officers in the US just kill things at the first sign of inconvenience, but then I realized I understand exactly why:

When killing something solves every problem you may have and doesn't really have any downsides for you, why wouldn't you?

ourmandave4• 9 years ago

You'd think the downside would be living with the knowledge you killed someone's beloved pet. Cops are people too.

snakeanus• 9 years ago

This seems like a small price to pay.

xkcd-sucks2• 9 years ago

Cops are people too

The motivation to go home unharmed every night and retire with a pension probably trumps abstract moral considerations

xxSparkleSxx• 9 years ago

Lots of people in all sorts of awful companies/government positions normalize what they contribute to every day. And they go home and sleep fine.

I'm sure there are dozens of people reading and agreeing with your comment right now and many go to work everyday for companies that have a negative effect on society. Yet, they won't see in that way. They have a job and it's all about "looking out for number one."

StavrosK6• 9 years ago

It seems to me there's quite a bit of selection bias there. The cops killing pets are the ones who don't care if they kill a pet. The whole point is that the system needs to be set up in such a way that even the ones who'd kill a dog for nothing don't get to.

jxramos7• 9 years ago

Here's an exact demo of the problem Dog Attack Forces Officer To Shoot | Active Self Protection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJrcvFivaKI

I don't think police get pleasure from doing this sort of thing, they're amped up and trying to defend life in the end.

StavrosK6• 9 years ago

How many police officers get killed by dog attacks? Why is it that only US officers' life is threatened by dogs, and officers in other countries don't have to kill dogs (or people) to do their job?

Apes• 9 years ago

There is no reason the officer should have drawn his firearm when pepperspray or a baton would have been sufficient in this situation. The tendency to automatically resort to their proverbial nuclear option is ridiculous. We should be training police to effectively use and be comfortable with their entire tool set, rather than just having them default to their firearm.

As a side note, in the confusion of an arrest, it's easy for a suspect to not realize how much the situation has escalated, and for a police officer to repeatedly give conflicting orders to a suspect, both of which result in a needless death.

Here's an idea: Police should have a loud speaker and strobe light on their uniform that trigger when they unholster their firearm. The speaker should repeat over and over until they re-holster their weapon:

"SIREN BLARE A POLICE OFFICER HAS DRAWN THEIR WEAPON. REMAIN STILL UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS OR YOU WILL BE SHOT."

The strobe light should trigger constantly to let the deaf know an officer has drawn their weapon.

There's two reasons for this:

1. It should make it clear to a suspect that they are dangerously close to being shot, and should very quickly change their behavior

2. An officer should not be allowed to give orders to a surrendering and motionless suspect as long as they have their weapon unholstered.

If they wish to give commands to the suspect, they should re-holster their firearm and possibly switch to a less lethal device if the situation calls for it.

bluedino2• 9 years ago

On the other hand, you have two unknown dogs approaching you. They are of a potentially dangerous breed, and will likely defend their territory.

Sure, your pitbull might be a lover but this type of dog is frequently in the news for biting people and killing children/elderly.

ourmandave4• 9 years ago

Heh, pitbulls. I was at the crowded dog park one weekend and this family showed up with a muzzled pitbull. The first thing it did was attack my dog. Even with the muzzle on it was able to nip my dog in the ass a few times before it got pulled off.

But that's not about the pitbull. It's about the asshole who brought his pre-muzzled dog to a dog park knowing it was vicious.

twic• 9 years ago

Perhaps it would be informative to look at how many policemen have been killed or injured by dogs in countries where they do not routinely shoot them.

hiyer• 9 years ago

Not sure if you watched the video, but the dog was at least 10 feet away from him when he shot it, and it wasn't approaching any further. And if you read the article, there's also an example where a cop shot at a labrador on a leash (and hit a 4-year old girl instead).

eplanit• 9 years ago

"Police should have a loud speaker and strobe light on their uniform that trigger when they unholster their firearm."

Interesting idea, really. In addition to the warnings, the unholstering should also activate body and dash cameras (if not already on), and send a signal of the event to authorities (plural) which records the date/time/lat/lon/etc...

yomly• 9 years ago

This is a cool idea for IoT based policing. As a public entity, they should be confident for all actions to be scrutinised and hold up in a court of law.

I was going to suggest connected guns (for additional data harvesting) but realised a connected gun that could be hacked is a terrible idea.

burntrelish12734• 9 years ago

This might have a side-benefit of not amping up the officer with extreme shouting. A loud megaphone, tactical breathing and a calming voice can defuse more situations instead of self-fulfilling prophecies causing bad outcomes.

Meta: also, the US needs more of citizen-led policing a-la Michael A. Wood, Jr. where the police are part of, and communicate with, the community, instead of being merely a mandatory, occupying, paramilitary mafia resting on the monopoly on violence with impunity, lackadaisical/inconsistent training and blue wall of silence.

rayiner6• 9 years ago

Or we should just disarm police officers.

scottLobster10• 9 years ago

Yeah, let's disarm the police officers while the criminals keep their guns. Sounds like a great plan! /s

Extreme solutions are rarely the answer. I wouldn't walk through South-side Chicago unarmed as a civilian.

jxramos7• 9 years ago

I've seen video of police in Australia who are unarmed run away from armed criminals. It's pretty humiliating.

martalist4• 9 years ago

Or maybe disarm the population a little so that police don't feel like they're in an arms race?

rawfan2• 9 years ago

It's not about disarming police officers, it's about disarming the public. We have armed police officers in Germany. The number of people they shoot per year is close to nil. They can expect no one is going to kill them and act that way.

Really.. just make it harder to get a gun license. Only hunters and security personel should be able to get one. Plus a limited license for people who shoot for sports. No one whatsoever should be able to buy automatic machine guns and the like.

That won't immediately solve the problem, but is IMO the only way to start a solution.

What you SHOULD take away from cops are the supposedly NON-LETHAL weapons. Cops use them, as if they did no harm and don't think twice about using a less problematic option.

normalocity• 9 years ago

Given that shots are often fired in a second or less, the strobe option is a bit of a technical solution to a non-technical problem, to say the least.

As far as being comfortable with, and trained to use all the tools at their disposal (which should include better deescalation techniques): agreed.

prestonbriggs2• 9 years ago

Pardon my rant, but... People say "baton" and I always think of the lightweight tube runners carry around a track. In this context, a baton is a nightstick. Have you ever examined one? A friend showed me his grandfather's. It was about 2 feet long, made of cherry, and filled with lead. It would break down a door or ruin a car. It would certainly break bones. With the lead weight and small diameter, it would be more effective (lethal) than a baseball bat.

"Baton" is just a euphemism that papers over extreme violence.

leesalminen3• 9 years ago

Today, they're frequently collapsible, made of metal and can be used to break car windows.

woodman4• 9 years ago

When is the last time you saw something like that carried around that wasn't a rerun of "Cops" recorded in '89? Today you see telescoping steel tubes that certainly couldn't break down a door and could only break bones intentionally and with effort. You rarely see them deployed, which is unfortunate in my opinion, because it is an escalation of force step designed to counter physical but non-life-threatening aggression. So essentially you're abandoning a spectrum of force and adopting a model of only two modes - subjugated or dead.

sliverstorm2• 9 years ago

"Baton" is no more a euphemism than "night-stick". Baton is French for "stick".

DrScump3• 9 years ago

That sounds more like a blackjack than a standard police baton.

valuearb5• 9 years ago

Maybe police shouldn't be allowed to carry side-arms. Worked in London.

askvictor2• 9 years ago

If a police officer is not capable of maintaining their cool and issuing clear commands relevant to the context they're in, they shouldn't be issued a lethal weapon in the first place; a recorded voice shouldn't be a replacement for this, and might just add to the confusion of voices and noises, and wouldn't have understanding of the specific situation (until we get to robocop level AI)

The strobe idea might have some merit for the deaf, or folks who don't understand the local language, so long as there is a long standing education campaign.

tdeck• 9 years ago

In many of these police shootings, the whole interaction is over before you could finish that warning sentence.

woodman4• 9 years ago

No kidding, this is exactly what pepperspray was invented for. Before I was even allowed to touch the stuff in the military I had to read a short history of it and a load of technical facts, oh and then get sprayed in the face before running an obstacle course...

I really don't see how cops are able to have their cake and eat it too, with the whole "gotta do whatever to get home at the end of the day" and "we bravely risk our lives to hold the thin blue line".

burntrelish12734• 9 years ago

Sabre Red and similar pepper-sprays have a UV dye so it's possible to see on whom and where it was deployed under a blacklight.

burntrelish12734• 9 years ago

Yup. Sabre Red 50 grams (with UV dye) works wonders. Every sane, normal person should carry capsaicin spray on their person to non-lethally halt the majority of (usually ambush) attacks by animals, human or otherwise.

Johnny555• 9 years ago

I've already warned my family to not, under any circumstances, allow the police to enter our home or yard (without a warrant) while the dogs are there, because there's a good chance that our dogs will end up dead.

Even if the officer is there to discuss a robbery, do not allow him in unless the dogs are secured outside the house.

__jal2• 9 years ago

It is really an extension of the "Don't talk to cops" rule[1].

I wish I lived in a world where I trusted the police.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik

diogenescynic• 9 years ago

This seems to only be a problem in the US. It's definitely not a problem in Canada or Europe. It seems like it's becoming more and more clear that America is on a very different and worse path compared to other developed Western countries.

edejong• 9 years ago

You live in a world where you can trust police, however you're not in the right country. In most western european countries, the police is actually very reasonable. There are bad apples, for sure, but it's the exception, not the rule.

martalist4• 9 years ago

Was the officer in the article invited into the backyard? When police jump the fence I'm not sure stopping at the front door helps.

Sohcahtoa82• 9 years ago

This makes me really sad because those dogs probably have have no idea what happened. They saw a person new to them, heard a loud noise and suddenly their face is in excruciating pain and they don't understand why.

xkcd-sucks2• 9 years ago

The best part is, attacking a police dog is treated as the equivalent of attacking a human police officer.

rhcom2• 9 years ago

This actually isn't true. It is a federal offense to attack a police dog but it doesn't come with nearly the same level of penalty as attacking a human.

mberning• 9 years ago

Policing in the US operates under a ridiculous warrior ethos. It should be seriously reformed.

ajeet_dhaliwal• 9 years ago

No explanation of why the police went over the fence into the yard 20 minutes after the security company had already turned off the alarm and it was known the child activated it accidentally.

danschumann• 9 years ago

Another way tech could help would be putting biometric scanners on cops. If they freak out during medium-level exercises ( lets say a mock-dog attack ), maybe they are not beat cops! Officers should be expected to keep calm, in a sense, their job is delivering calm to situations: de-escalating.

mnm12• 9 years ago

How about not giving cops guns in the first place? It works in plenty of other countries. Of course, you still have armed police and SWAT teams available for more serious situations. I think short of this, nothing will solve any of the police shooting problems here in the states.

What Dog Shootings Reveal About American Policing

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