Are cops afraid of dogs? I’m afraid so. They’re afriad of all of us, especially gangs, but dogs just completely piss them off. There’s the fear of teeth I guess, and the fact that sooner or later, some men who carry guns around just have to shoot something. I’ve been watching the phenomenon for years. And until a recent computer crash, I’d amassed a respectable collection of news stories about cops shooting people’s dogs for stress relief, fun, target practice, and just because at the moment of making a decision a police officer is trained to resort to violence.

I remember when I was a kid in the Boy Scouts, and a veteran local cop gave a speech to our troop. He said that in about 20 years of being a police officer, he had never drawn his gun in the line of duty, because they were trained not to draw unless they intended to fire, not to fire except to kill. He’d never seen the need to kill anyone. And back then, the police didn’t tackle people unless forced to do so. They made you put your hands behind your back, handcuffed you, frisked you, and led you away to jail.

Now I watch TV – the documentary Cops shows – and I see that they draw their guns routinely, put people on the ground, tackle them, sit on them, etc. You’ve seen it too. The have batons and teargas and such, but they increasingly pull their Glocks, and more often we see a guy on the ground with a cop’s knee on his neck.

Recently, I saw a Cops show where they’d set up a drug buying sting. People walked up to an undercover cop, bought drugs, and were arrested as they left. Except they weren’t arrested. As each buyer walked away, he was tackled – blindsided – by a cop who flew at him from the shadows off-camera. Then more cops piled on. I’m saying each one was literally tackled, like in football, slammed to the pavement, by screaming officers. They were breaking the law, they got busted, but dammit they’re still citizens and entitled to fair treatment and due process of law. Instead, their civil rights were grossly violated. And no, this wasn’t an episode from Moscow or Beijing. It was someplace like St. Louis or Kansas City. And the cops went there with cameras – they knew it was being filmed.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a law-abiding, law-respecting, citizen. I respect the police and the courts, and I’m certainly not suggesting that the cops should put themselves at unnecessary risk. But something is getting out of control somewhere. There’s been a shift in the way The Authorities view The People, the people’s property, and – most offensive – people’s little pets.

TELL CITY, Ind. – Mayor Gayle Strassel says the city’s street department was wrong to dump dogs shot by city police officers onto the bank of the Ohio River behind a near-downtown flood wall, but she defends the shooting of the animals.

Complaints surfaced last weekend after Tell City residents questioned the presence of yhe deteriorating carcasses of three dogs along the riverbank.

Perry County does not have an animal control officer, and the dogs had been shot by police, Chief David Faulkenberg said, after they exhibited aggressive tendencies toward officers. A county ordinance requires dogs to be on a leash. [Link]

One of the three dogs shot and dumped by these people, who are armed and trained to defend themselves against humans by non-lethal means, was a boxer named Harley. You can read about Harley here. And expect lots of posts on this topic, because cops are afraid of dogs, they’re triggerhappy, and I’m rebuilding my collection of these stories. This chickenshit behavior has to stop.