Woman acquitted after protecting dog from cop

Myrealana · Mar 9, 2016

There's a K9 officer who regularly takes his partner, Riley, to the Petco where my German Shepherd, Kaylee, gets her toys and training.

Kaylee is downright tiny for her breed. Barely 55 lbs. She looks at Riley like he's Superdog or something. Kaylee is pretty good on her leash, until she sees someone she loves, like Riley. Then she tugs and pulls, and even though she's small, she can drag me along with her. Riley just sits there while Kaylee sniffs all around, whining like a puppy, straining against the leash, wagging her tail and overall behaving like a teenage girl at a Beatles concert while I struggle to pull her back.

I asked the officer last night if he saw this kind of behavior as a threat because I'd heard of police shooting friendly dogs just for coming towards them, even when restrained.

He said "If Riley and I ever meet one of those officers in a dark alley, he'll learn the true meaning of 'dangerous dog.'"

And he had a dog cookie in his pocket for Kaylee, so now she loves him almost as much as she loves Riley.

Twick · Mar 11, 2016

I have to say, there seems to have been a shift in policing in North America over the past twenty years or so. I remember once reading how in Vancouver police had, in one year, fired a weapon exactly twice, and hit nothing either time. I'm sure the number of shots fired is much higher now. Certainly in Toronto there are many more police shootings per year.

Perhaps part of it is a tendency of people they're pursuing to shoot first and use their heads second as well. Perhaps it's, as a previous poster said, an increasingly military training program that concentrates on preparing officers for action as if they were soldiers, rather than on keeping the peace in the first place. Perhaps growing up on a diet of Dirty Harry movies has warped some recruits' ideas of what policing should be.

In any case, the common response of trying to seize videos after an incident tells me they realize when they've stepped over the line.

robjvargas · Mar 11, 2016

Twick said:
In any case, the common response of trying to seize videos after an incident tells me they realize when they've stepped over the line.

I wish I could be as kind toward law enforcement in the USA.

Instead, I believe that attempts to seize private video and even lobby for making laws against video recording of police activities leads me to believe police organizations feel immune to any form of outside accountability.

If I'm right, then the problem as they see it isn't that these videos spotlight police misbehavior. The problem as they see it is that we citizens believe we have a right to examine their behavior at all.

Woman acquitted after protecting dog from cop

Myrealana

I aim to misbehave

Twick

robjvargas