{"id":386,"date":"2008-08-08T02:00:10","date_gmt":"2008-08-08T10:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=386"},"modified":"2009-09-25T20:56:08","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T04:56:08","slug":"police-killings-of-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=386","title":{"rendered":"Police Killings of Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-top: 1em ; padding-left: 1em;  padding-right: 1em; padding-bottom: 0em ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/news\/local\/bal-mayor0807,0,4563211.story\"><q>Prince George's raid prompts call for probe<\/q> by Doug Donovan of <cite>the Baltimore Sun<\/cite><\/a> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\"><p>When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">[&#8230;]<\/span><\/p> <p><span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">[&#8230;]<\/span><\/p> <p>Police have said the dogs <q>engaged<\/q> officers. Calvo confirmed that Payton probably moved toward the door but would have ultimately done nothing more than lick them.<\/p> <p><span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">[&#8230;]<\/span><\/p> <p>Chase was shot while running away from sheriff's deputies, Calvo said.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div> <p>Okay, now I could write about the idiocy of the War on Drugs, but I want to instead talk about something <em>else<\/em> that makes me furious.<\/p> <p>Far too many police, in far too many cases, have clearly demonstrated that they believe themselves to have the right to <em>punish<\/em> criminals by <em>executing their dogs<\/em>.<\/p> <p>I'm <em>not<\/em> talking about cases where the dog has attacked, or has behaved in a way that indicates that it is an immediate threat.<\/p> <p>It's not the right of a police officer to <em>punish<\/em>, period.  And it's not the right of <em>anyone<\/em> to punish some <em>person<\/em> by killing an innocent companion animal.  It doesn't fundamentally <em>matter<\/em>, when it comes to the killing of the Calvo dogs, that the Calvos were innocent.  Even if they had been guilty of something truly <em>criminal<\/em>, it wouldn't be the right of police to <em>kill their dogs<\/em> because of who their owners were.<\/p> <p>Police officials who needlessly kill dogs are never given worse than slaps on their wrists.  Instead, <em>they need to do hard prison time<\/em>.  More specifically: <ul><li>If it can been shown that police conducted a raid such as this, where they could have brought and deployed non-lethal measures but did not, then one or more of the officials needs to spend <em>years<\/em> in prison.  It should even be a criminal offense (albe&iuml;t perhaps just a misdemeanor) for any participating officer not to know who has been assigned responsibility for those non-lethal measures, so that treasonous bastards cannot merely pretend that there was a <q>mix-up<\/q>.  Note that I am not claiming that non-lethal measures can always be employed; but, when it is practicable to <em>prepare<\/em> them, police should be <em>required<\/em> to prepare them.<\/li><li>In any case where lethal methods have been used against a dog that is plainly <em>not<\/em> acting aggressively (as in the case of the dog who was attempting to <em>flee<\/em>), there should be <em>years<\/em> in prison.<\/li><\/ul> These sorts of laws need to be effected on a state level.  Governor O'Malley of Maryland should be recalled from office if he isn't the very first governor to produce a bill to such effect.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince George's raid prompts call for probe by Doug Donovan of the Baltimore Sun When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. [&#8230;] [&#8230;] Police have said the dogs engaged officers. Calvo confirmed that Payton probably moved toward the door but would have ultimately done nothing more than lick them. [&#8230;] Chase was shot while [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,104,4],"tags":[179,263,178,363],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ideology-philosophy","category-news","category-public","tag-companion-animals","tag-dogs","tag-pets","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}