I’m just a civilian, not an “LEO”, so what I say and think is irrelevant.

I have to believe that this is the most appropriate use of “scare quotes” in the entire history of the world wide interwebs. EVER.*

I hope you don’t mind if I just outright steal that for future blog comments. I’d be happy to attribute it to you, if you wish.

*Note the very poor use of SCREAM CAPS.

“IF police would just fire the gun into the air, in all likelihood it would scare the crap out of a dog.

They don’t like the sharp report from a firearm. It hurts their senstitive ears.”

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I couldn’t help but respond to this. If you fire a gun in the presence of any well trained Brittany, Pointer, GSP, Vizsla or Labrador, you will have on your hands an overjoyed canine who may well run toward the gunfire.

My GSP loves the sound of gunfire. I never even had to “gun break” her.

Self-defense is self-defense, pure and simple.

No, I don’t think any cops will read it or if they did it would make a damn bit of difference. I’m just a civilian, not an “LEO”, so what I say and think is irrelevant.

@steve: walls and leashes won’t protect your dog when cops traipse through your backyard and shoot your dog, as has been documented on here many times. The cops are just doing their job, following policy, and need to go home safe. Your safety is irrelevant.

I know, in the end if the cops want to kill my dogs there is nothing I can do about it…well not immediately. It is one reason why I dislike them so. If a cop comes over the wall in my back yard my dogs will respond and likely be shot. Nothing I can do about that.

@steve: walls and leashes won’t protect your dog when cops traipse through your backyard and shoot your dog, as has been documented on here many times. The cops are just doing their job, following policy, and need to go home safe. Your safety is irrelevant.

This is the great libertarian test case that does not seem to be engaging libertarians. This is about preventing destruction of beloved pets by a police officer who is trampling the Constitution.

This, rather than the Kelly beating, is where the real attention should be.

see also:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=177&invol=529

Oh, cops aren’t the only ones, I read some gun forums and there are plenty of “civilian” pistol carriers who are just itching for the chance to put a cap in some dog’s ass. Always there are questions like “my neighbor’s dog growled at me the other day, would it have been legal for me to shoot it?” .

And sometimes there are even ones boasting about their latest “kills.” So just one more reason not let your dog run off-leash, too many fearful “men” with tiny penises running around with guns just itching to draw a bead on something (it seems like those types are just looking for something to live in fear of ; if there isn’t a real threat they will just invent something).

The only difference between these guys and cops is they don’t have qualified immunity, so they do have to worry about some legalities.

To identify themselves, the cops yell, “Police!” That is supposed to be enough for the rest of us to know that they are, indeed, police. But when someone is on/in your property, threatening you or your family, and he looks ready to use a gun…it is difficult for your brain to process the identifiers of a policeman. Your focus goes to what is most important: This is my family/my home and that guy has a gun.

I have no memory of the ICE agents showing me any identification beyond yelling that they were police. They may have; I have no memory of it because all I could think about was my children. The chaos of the situation made it impossible for me to make sense of what was happening. All I knew was the guy nearly shot my dog, my kids were in the house and I didn’t know who/where/how many these guys were.

The worst part, as Hitcho learned, is that whatever you do in your panic is something you will be bound to. The cops know what is going on because they have control of the chaos. You don’t. They count on you doing/saying something that will help them. (I’m not saying Hitcho panicked; I don’t know.) At the time, I didn’t feel panicked but now I can see that all I was able to do was to react to the chaos and focus on the most important piece: where are my kids.

Stem said he has many questions about the shooting that he worries may not be resolved at trial. He said Hitcho might be able to answer them, but he doubts the defendant will take the stand in own defense to testify about what happened.

here is the latest on the Hitcho case:

Jury selection for the trial of George Hitcho Jr., the man accused of fatally shooting Freemansburg police officer Robert Lasso, is set to begin Monday.

Police Chief George Bruneio has testified that he arrived as Lasso struggled to fend off the dogs. He yelled at Lasso to shoot them with his stun gun, but a shot rang out and Lasso crumpled to the ground, he said. As the dogs ran off, Bruneio said, he saw Hitcho emerge from a lattice door near the house with a shotgun drawn. The weapon was jammed, and Bruneio had to order him several times to drop the weapon, he said.

It would be nice if some real lawyers would step up to the plate and help this guy. Stun gun my ass. Hitcho also claimed that the police officer pointed a gun at him, which would seem to have reasonably put him in fear of his life. His state-appointed lawyers want to plead insanity. Lazy idiots.

Last summer a cop in PA got blown away with a shotgun after a dog owner heard his police chief yelling at him to “shoot the dogs!” . And I’m sure it will happen again, it’s just a matter of time.

Cops are too pigheaded to understand that they are the ones who are making things so much more dangerous for themselves.

Incentives matter, and if what is stopping some wronged owners now is the worry of fighting the justice system, we should try to alleviate that as much as possible. You are not going to get pigs to change their behavior by writing letters or even suing (since taxpayers get the bill). But if the pig realizes his target practice might make him miss his pension-funded retirement at 40, he may think twice (for some broad sense of the word ‘think’).

Not likely. My theory is that when a cop kills anything, it transforms into a zombie. Karma dictates that there is now a large and quickly growing pack of brain-eating zombie pups looking for a cop snack.

Regarding the mailmen, meter readers, etc. that numerous people have cited for their ability to do their jobs without killing dogs, let me add that in the pre-internet days (when every household read newspapers) there was a virtual army of 12 to 15 year old kids delivering these papers on bikes to everyone’s front porch every day. And this was well before the days when most local governments began enacting leash laws, etc. I was one of these paperboys, and like the rest, I quickly learned on my own to recognize dog behaviors, and how to avoid getting bitten by aggressive dogs while still performing my job.