Forbidden Donut

"It only gets worse from there. The police then arrested Peeples on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon—the weapon being his now dying dog. Peeples says they then euthanized his dog, despite his explicit instructions not to."

It's not just the fact that they shot this guy's dog. It's the insane mishandling of it after the fact that bothers me more. Reacting to a bounding dog can be a bit stressful or whatever, I'll let it slide, but to arrest the guy too? Cmon... I think the preferred terminology there is "the animal was destroyed". Sounds less like there's a dead pet.

"If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern."
—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.

I won't give my full rant for the dog thing, but its pointless to violate the knock and announce rule in Canada. If we knock and announce, we can take down a door immediately afterward.

Still don't have to wait for them to get there /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

tap tap... police
Blam goes the door. (with a perfectly reasonable point zero three second interval between the two)

If there is reasonable doubt that the suspect(s) deserve a no-knock warrant, why give them the benefit of getting prepared. Give the cops every advantage they can get; I'm on their side every time.

That's insane. I can't even describe how staggering that series of statements is.

http://patdollard.com/2008/12/kill-them-wi...ers-in-the-ass/

LOL

Sounds like a fun place to work to me.

This is what happened to my dog. She got through the electric fence and the trooper shot her. He never even got close enough to see that she had a collar and tags.

Agreed.

People are innocent until proven guilty, but the police officer's life and health is more important to me. If the crime that he/she/they are accused of needs a no-knock warrant, then go for it.

I'm just gonna throw this out there.

"I am a Pennsylvania State Trooper, a soldier of the law.
To me is entrusted the honor of the force.
I must serve honestly, faithfully, and if need be, lay down my life as others have done before me, rather than swerve from the path of duty.
It is my duty to obey the law and to enforce it without any consideration of class, color, creed or condition.
It is also my duty to be of service to anyone who may be in danger or distress, and at all times so conduct myself that the honor of the force may be upheld."

Police would disagree with you Alfy. Their life is valued second to their duty. Which is to protect, and to serve. And when they say serve, they aren't talking about no-knock warrants.

You're right.


Why do they wear body armor then?

BTW, Dog's life < Human's well being

On top of all that, the judges are the ones to approve a "no-knock" warrant.

... They aren't suicidal.

Agreed, a dog's life is less important than a human's well being. With that said, is it ok for me to shoot your pet if I feel threatened by it?

You have no idea how many cops would laugh in your face if you said that to them.

Is that suppose to be in support of those cops?

wouldn't be the first time a cops laughed at me. wouldn't be the first time they'd be wrong to either.

lol you have a funny expectation of cops if you expect them to lay down their life for something as ambiguous as "duty". Especially in the states where cops barely make $30k a year before OT.

I'd say them laughing at you would be deserved.

And yes gov, it is in defense of those cops. Being a cop is still a job. The cops still want to go home at night to their families, "duty" be damned.

I find the philosophy of making cops be devoted enough to lay down their lives for their job, yet not give them the capability to do their job at the best of their ability and as safe as possible to be pretty selfish and baffling.

This double standard is ridiculous. Cops should get special privileges and consideration because what they do for a living is dangerous, but what they do is nothing more than a simple job, so I'm in the wrong for holding them to a higher standard?

And I only expect police to lay down their lives for their jobs because they took a god damn oath to do so. It's the same reason I expect US soldiers to lay down their lives for their country. It's the same reason I expect doctors to practice medicine to the highest ethical standards. If they didn't want that level of responsibility, then they shouldn't have taken the job in the first place.

To what end, Pheylan? If we really wanted to give them the capability to do their job at the best of their ability and as safe as possible, then we could simply give them an absolute license to kill. I mean, if we are to ignore their fuck-ups entirely, then we can ignore all of the consequences of such a license, right?

What "special privileges and consideration" are you talking about exactly? No one is asking for police to not be held accountable for their actions.

There is also a difference between holding someone to a higher standard and asking for them to lay down their lives in the course of their job.

nobody is saying that they shouldn't be accountable for their actions, but I am saying that there is an unusually high number of incidents in which they aren't. There was also a discussion earlier about giving police the ability to acquire guns more easily than regular citizens. I'd call that a special privilege. I think that the power they wield could be called a special privilege as well. And if they can't treat those two privileges with enough responsibility to avoid breaking and entering a lawful person's home and murdering either them or their pets (let's use the words they'd use to describe a regular citizen doing the same thing shall we?) then are they privileges we want to continue to expand?

Andrew basically stated my response to the first part.

But we hold them to a hire standard because they vowed to lay down their lives and shoulder the huge responsibility of the position they were taking.

How many incidents are there really each year where the officers "break the law?" Assuming you can find that fact, I guarantee most of them aren't a situation where they went in looking to do something wrong; things simply went bad and they made a mistake. Chances are they have to pay for that mistake.

Cops aren't the bad guys. It's people that require us to have police because they themselves are scum that are the problem.

Every job has special abilities and privileges needed to perform their jobs at the best of their ability. Normally it's illegal to stab someone, yet doctors do it on a regular basis. I guess we should make them stop performing surgery, after all most other people can't do it.

Great! That's all I ask. If a cop makes a mistake, then they should pay for it just the same as everyone else. If I killed my neighbors dog because it was barking at me when I was trying to do my job, then I would have to pay the price. The same I expect and demand for any police officer that commits a similar crime who's salary I help pay. In many cases, they do, and that is wonderful. It's only when people start saying "give them a break" or "let them do their job" that I get in an uproar. That implies special consideration, and I refuse to give them it.

It's not illegal to stab someone.

And just to clarify, I'm not simply against police breaking the law (although I am most certainly against that); I am also opposed to any law that gives special consideration or treatment to any group of individuals (including cops). For example, I am opposed to many state laws that declare that killing a police officer automatically constitutes a graver crime than killing any other civilian. If you want strict penalties for murder, then you should apply them to all offenders regardless of race, gender, education, or employment.

Curiously, stats are unavailable for this. Unlike the FBI crime statistics which outline demographic by demographic every crime reported in every city. Being a cop doesn't give you your own metric. Funny, that.

That said, here's one.
I'll temper this story with one of cops doing well.

I'm happy to keep doing that until I run out of one or the other, but I can tell you right now it's much easier to find stories of police not only doing poorly, but flagrantly violating the law. And yes, it IS violating the law, unless you consider cops to be above the law.

Here's a gem.

ATL cops shoot a 92-year-old woman, then leave her to bleed to death in her own home while they planted drugs in her basement.

Oh yeah... they were all sentenced. The worst to 10 whole years in prison.

For comparison:
A Dubuque man accused of growing 180 marijuana plants in his home last summer has pleaded guilty to a federal drug charge.
The U.S. attorney's office in Cedar Rapids says Craig Nesteby pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of growing marijuana near a playground. His house is within 1,000 feet of a playground.
Nesteby faces up to 80 years in prison and a $4 million fine. A sentencing date hasn't been set.