{"id":440,"date":"2008-11-18T12:26:02","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T17:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/another-cop-kills-another-dog\/"},"modified":"2008-11-19T00:03:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-19T05:03:40","slug":"another-cop-kills-another-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/another-cop-kills-another-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Cop Kills Another Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

I swear I’m not going out looking for stories about cops shooting dogs. They’ve just become so common that I stumble across them every couple of weeks in the course of casual surfing.<\/p>\n

This time it was in Pittsburgh. A sheriff’s deputy, looking to serve papers on someone, went into the wrong backyard, where a 10 month old puppy was on a leash. The dog’s owner directed him to the correct address, but the cop killed her dog anyway<\/a>. The cop claimed the dog “lunged” at him.<\/p>\n

I’m beginning to suspect that “Dog Shooting 101” is part of police academy training. The first day of the course the instructor explains the process:<\/p>\n

“Gentlemen, marksmanship is one of your most important police skills. Practicing at the range is only a start. Those targets are human sized, and they don’t move.”<\/p>\n

“As you know, you can shoot people with impunity, confident that you will not be punished. However, sometimes people shoot back. While it’s good to know that you won’t be punished for killing them, and that they will spend life in jail if they dare to defend themselves, there is still some element of risk in murdering citizens. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, sometimes even a show trial before you’re exonerated. And if you kill a minority we may have to put up with Al Sharpton coming to town.”<\/p>\n

“So we recommend taking pot shots at dogs whenever you have a chance. Not only is a dog a smaller target, which will improve your marksmanship, but there are no consequences when you kill one. If you’re feeling rusty, shoot one that’s chained up or in a fenced in yard.”<\/p>\n

“And don’t forget this phrase: ‘he lunged at me.’ That’s all the explanation you’ll need.”<\/p>\n

“That’s it for today, men. Have a good day, and happy shooting!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I swear I’m not going out looking for stories about cops shooting dogs. They’ve just become so common that I stumble across them every couple of weeks in the course of casual surfing. This time it was in Pittsburgh. A sheriff’s deputy, looking to serve papers on someone, went into the wrong backyard, where a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}