Nomination for Hero Badge

The cops, firefighters and paramedics have been behaving themselves recently, or I haven’t been paying attention. Here we get the Federal Courts stepping in to sanction questionable police shootings. Federal-court-rules-police-shoot dogs on search warrants legal. I don’t like pit bulls. I don’t trust them. I expect them to be aggressive and violent until proven otherwise. 

I have participated in roughly 2000 search warrants. I have been confronted with loose pythons, pot bellied pigs, dogs of a wide variety of breeds, roosters, cats, foul mouthed parrots, and budgies. In almost twenty years of operation, I think we killed two dogs. During that same period we also shot three humans. The humans and one of the dogs survived. We sure felt bad about shooting the dogs.

A Federal Court has ruled that officers were justified in killing two pit bulls during a narcotics search warrant and set a very low standard to justify the shooting. Courts throughout the United States regard pets as property and set a low standard for replacement value and a high standard before liability attaches.

Our attitude was that the dog was doing its job and not acting out of animosity towards us. We spent a lot of time and effort coming up with alternatives rather than resorting to firearms. This wasn’t an entirely altruistic move on our part. Limitations of space, visual barriers and the speed with which the team moved resulted in two scenarios. Upon initial entry the team would be bunched up and moving, gun fire would just as likely hit a team member as the canine target. As the team progressed through the location, no single team member had visual contact with every other team member. A gunshot in a back bedroom could start an over reaction and distraction adding chaos to an already chaotic scene.

What seemed to work best was a CO2 fire extinguisher. The small ones were readily portable and lightweight.  All we had to do was point it in the general direction and depress the lever. Simultaneously it would roar and discharge a white powder. A dog hit in the face with that didn’t hang around.  We hit one house four times over a two month period. The third time we hit the place the guy with the fire extinguisher discharged it as we were exiting the van. The great dane recognized the noise for what it was and ran away from home before we got inside. The final time that we raided that residence, the dog apparently recognized  the sound of our approaching vehicles  and was heading for the neighbor’s house.

The only reason that I can offer as to why more dogs are being shot under sometimes questionable circumstances is that the requirements of the job has changed. My generation were a bunch of macho risk takers who were not afraid of “honorable injury”. What happened on the street today was discussed in bars, locker rooms and coffee shops relentlessly. It was okay to shoot a pit bull gnawing on your arm. No amount of explanation was going to cover the shooter with glory when he dispatched “FiFi” the toy Pomeranian for slobbering the spit shine on boots taller than it.  In the old days the shooter had to provide a detailed explanation, ” a pit bull was gnawing on my arm, I didn’t like that, so I shot it.” Nowadays police forms are fill in the blank:

Yes            No

Dog Attack ?

Damage to person or property?

Deadly Force Used?

Did you get the part about FiFi? No, me neither.

The modern cop has to think about “Risk Management” FiFi may not have posed much of a bite risk, but somebody could have tripped over her, broke an ankle. That could cost the city or its insurer half a year’s wages. If on the other hand FiFi was reduced to blood, brains and eyeballs on a berber carpet, a replacement mutt and discount carpet cleaning job, the city is out $250 – $300 max.