August 4, 2010

Shoot-out at the... dog park? This week's edition of cops killing dogs

Honestly, it's enough to make me fear for my pups. Over at The Agitator, Radley Balko covers the latest cases of puppycide:

In Willits, CA an officer serving a search warrant shot and killed a family pet, an 8-year-old half-pit bull mix named Tonka:


According to resident Anna White, Tonka’s owner, the police shot her pet while it was in a fenced area on her front porch. “We found the shell casing outside by the fence area. Tonka then ran into our house, got onto my bed and died.”

White described her bedroom following the search, claiming Tonka’s body had been dumped from the bed onto the floor and items from her room dropped onto the body and into the dog’s blood. “They destroyed our house and found nothing,” says White. “Tonka lived long enough to die on my bed, which we shared each night.”
Does that tear your heart out, or what? Oh, and this: "When agents searched the home, they found nothing," reported the local paper.

Agents. found. nothing. They tore up the house and killed the family dog, and didn't find a damn thing. Gotta love that War on [some] Drugs.

"Finding nothing" seems to happen with depressing regularity when the family dog is gunned down by police, which brings us to the next case of dog killed by cop:
Stunned dog owners and residents of a Severn neighborhood are shocked that authorities won't be charging a federal police officer who shot and killed a Siberian husky Monday night at a community dog park.
The federal police officer panicked when the husky started playing "fighting" with the officer's German shepherd. According to the husky's owner Rachel Rettaliata, local animal control officials reported that they found no scratch or bite marks on either dog.

And no charges will be filed...! Try to imagine how you'd feel if some panicky Nimrod emptied his gun into one of your dogs for no sane reason under the sun. And got away with it. Damn.

Related:

From this blog:


["Holy Crap" by Marc Johns.]

1 comment:

Katie said...

You can read the police report here on the Baltimore case.

Why are so many cops so quick to pull their guns and start shooting when it comes to dogs?? Are they just that afraid of them? Even if the dogs *were* fighting, even if the Shepherd *was* being attacked, what are the odds that you really need a gun to break it up? Especially a fight so serious that the attacked dog didn't actually sustain any injuries. People break up dog fights in dog parks every single day without shooting anybody's dog.