Per the Fifth Amendment, people are not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. While it’s unclear what exactly is required under Constitutional “due process”, a lot of people have their dogs slaughtered with no due process whatsoever. That’s just plain unlawful. Too bad nobody calls the totalitarian anarchists to task for it.

Even if one didn’t care about animals, some government agents are deliberately and wantonly destroying many people’s most prized property. Whether or not dogs can be regarded as victims, their owners certainly can.

A friend of mine who started a charity for cancer research is upset by people who donate to animal charities ahead of his. I simply do not understand this attitude.

Freedom is the essence of charity. One must be free to pursue those charities with which one sympathizes, the others be damned.

Thanks for reaching into your smug white guy bag and pulling out the oh-so-fresh “race card” and “guilty white liberal” catch phrases. But my comment was not meant to insult this discussion or the people here, it was simply to point out that this abuse of power is happening to HUMAN BEINGS every day. Maybe if we start with that, we could figure out how a cop could shoot a dog in the head and claim it was the proper thing to do. Goodbye, I’m done, sorry if I made you mad.

From the Agitator:
They can come into your home, kill your dog, and leave. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.
To which I would add the following, expressed by entirely too many of my peers:
Why would you want to?  It isn’t lik…

LEOs consider your attitude doubleplusungood.

You may become an unperson.

Dogs are property.

Humans are persons. For now.

But the possibility of a cop being charged with the murder of a citizen is pretty much ZERO. Remember, they are always “in fear for their lives.” And if the murder isn’t on video tape, well, we all know how the cops portray that story.
Ironcial–these steriod pumped up goons–these big tough guys are the ones in this society who are always “in fear for their lives.”

From a LEO’s perspective, all of this is beside the point anyway. A dog is dangerous because it’s a dog, especially a medium-sized dog like an ACD. It may not charge, but it’s going to be dispatched just the same.

If the dog is dangerous because it is a dog, then what does that make its owner? 5x the threat under this inane reasoning that cops use, and it’s probably only the possibility of being charged with murder that keeps them from shooting up any potential threat.

You can play the race card where the guilty white liberals hang out, because I think you’ll find most of the people who come here are outraged at the abuses of power in general, not just when it concerns dogs (or white people).

I didn’t handle ACD’s, but only because they didn’t become popular until after I stopped being kennel help.

However, I have seen the breed. They are typical “herder” dogs (like border collies). As CinCA notes, they will nip at the heels of people – actually in an attempt to “herd” them – but it is also a dominance behavior.

There is a border collie where my horse is boarded, we have the damnedest time keeping him out of the paddocks, because he keeps trying to herd the horses by nipping at their back legs. (Someday, he is going to try the boss mare when we aren’t watching him and there is going to be a huge vet bill.) The reason I mention this dog is that his typical greeting for every visitor is to run at them flat out, barking wildly the whole way, then jump up and lick their faces. You can imagine how that would play out in a SWAT raid. (Extremely unlikely as the local cops all know the owner personally and he is as ‘square’ as they come.)

A close friend of mine has a 10-year-old 80-pound male ACD named Smokey. My friend does not like having small children around Smokey, because Smokey will try to dominate any creature smaller than he is. While Smokey doesn’t charge per se, he does approach houseguests very assertively. He also nips at people’s heels.

From a LEO’s perspective, all of this is beside the point anyway. A dog is dangerous because it’s a dog, especially a medium-sized dog like an ACD. It may not charge, but it’s going to be dispatched just the same.

The prosecution would suppress any evidence that the cop ever shot any dog anywhere. As a juror, you’d never find out about it.

Note that the information would be suppressed because it’s supposedly “irrelevant”, but the truth would be exactly the opposite: prosecutors would suppress the information not because it wasn’t relevant, but because it was.

The strangest puppycide reports I have seen are the ones where the cops shoot labs (i.e Mayor Calvo). Labs are practically born to love people. The only reason to shoot a lab is if you hate dogs.

I would say a very close second is the recent incident where an Australian Cattle Dog was the victim. The cop/shooter said the dog charged. If, in addition to the breeds you’ve already listed, you’ve handled ACD’s, you can corroborate what I wrote in a comment to that story: ACD’s don’t charge.

They are called blue heelers, because they heel. I promise, if you tell an ACD to heel, it will heel. Tell it to sit, it will sit. And the last thing they do is charge. They wait for commands before they do anything. While they are pretty fierce predators to frisbees and sticks, they pose no threat to any carbon based life form.

The claim that an ACD charged at a person is absurd on it’s face to any person who has ever owned, trained, handled, or known one.

Cops in the 50s took what was dished out and dealt with it. Cops in the 50s didn’t need no fecking counselors to help them through stuff. Brains dripping from the ceiling from a suicide – NBD. Dog coming after you – night stick. Guy pulls a gun – whack him down.

Some time starting in the early 1990s we lost all sense of reason, objective truth and a healthy ability to be judgmental when we need to be. 20 years ago, if a cop came into your home, guns blazing at 2AM over a little bit of pot, even half of the cops would have thought the guy was a fruit loop trying to get someone killed. Today? He’s a fucking hero in a uniform out to save people from the life-destroying menace of that whore Mary J.

The thing I always wonder is why the dirt bags who give decent cops a bad name don’t suffer “unfortunate accidents” while on the job.

One year I read the breakdown of all the cops who were killed that particular year and if I remember correctly about one third of them were killed with their own guns so that right there seems to be a pretty good argument for disarming cops.

You’re doing it wrong.

“Sorry judge, I shot the officer in the head on information and belief that he was about to kill me.”

Citing US v John Bad Elk at that time is a good idea.