Full write-up not before me, but here's what happened. A guy driving his car being chased by cops swerved to avoid destroying his tires on one of those shredders the cops put out, skidded and hit a parked police car. Inside the police car was a police dog; it was killed in the crash. The driver was sentenced for "killing a police officer" and got 20 years. By inference, down the future a bit, will a line ever be drawn? Say, a car burns, all the bacteria in it are killed; what chargeable murderous intent may be leveled there? Frank
Police canines are treated in many jurisdictions the same as human officers. I suspect it is to prevent them from being killed by a weapon-carrying felon whom the police have sent the dog after. In my mind, the canines are "tools" to be used judiciously in pursuit of fleeing criminals and should be jealously protected by their handlers, but not valued in the same way as human officers. I know here a lot of money is spent on dogs and equipment, even to custom-fitted bullet resistant vests, but the handlers often don't even bother putting the vests on the dogs to protect them. Your cases sounds like it was incidental and not part of a pursuit, so I don't understand how someone could be sentenced to a longer term than many murderers receive.
By that logic, shouldn't the K-9s be cited for urinating in public? And are they even old enough to be put on payroll?
Who knows. Maybe in some cities urinating (and defecating) in public is acceptable. Take L.A. and San Francisco for example. Their feces will just be cleaned up by the city employees cleaning up the human waste.
In those jurisdictions, they get cited for not urinating in public. Are we in upside-down land, or what???
We put them in harm's way to promote our own safety. They deserve any and all protection we can give them.
Seems like a good sentence to me. I wonder what the guy was being chased by the police for. The tire shredder was put out for a reason.
That was my thought about this, too. Obviously, he had done something that had multiple police cars in pursuit, and they do not usually put down the tire-shredder unless nothing else works and the fugitive refuses to stop. He must have been driving at a high rate of speed to cause him to skid into the patrol car, and if a police officer had been in that car, he would likely have been killed, just like the K-9 police dog was killed. It must have been a huge impact. The K-9 dogs are considered to be the same as a police officer, in order to stop people from shooting the dog, and I think that this is a good thing. The sentence probably included all of the charges that the criminal was charged with, not just killing the police dog. I can’t find anything on an internet search that looks like this case, so if you can give us a link to the incident, @Frank Sanoica , that would help a lot.
@Yvonne Smith The link I do not have. Sorry. Only reason I can see for shooting a police dog is if it's threatening my personal existence; then, it's self defense. Your post contains several "ifs", "maybes", and "would-haves", which are heresay to the fact that equating the life of a human being to that of a dog is simply groundless. Frank
This occurred in 2019 in Indiana. 7/10/19 article on the initial situation: -Armed carjacking -Evading police across 2 counties -Hit the police car containing the dog, setting the car ablaze, which killed the dog -Had "several active warrants" 9/12/19 article on formal charges: -Causing the death of a law enforcement animal -Operating a vehicle with a schedule I or II controlled substance in the blood -Resisting law enforcement -Unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon -Criminal recklessness 9/7/21 article on the result of the trials -Sentenced to 10 years on unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon and causing the death of a law enforcement animal -To be served back-to-back with 26 year sentence on prior November 2020 conviction of armed robbery and auto theft in the same case As Paul Harvey would say, "Now you know the rest of the story." Oh, and don't do drugs, m'kay? Drugs are bad.
This reminds me of the selective reporting of news stories by the media if they want to project a story line. Give just enough facts to do so like Frank's post, but the real story is from John's post.
@Ed Wilson The real story remains that a DOG is not a human being, and no matter the degree of lawlessness exhibited, a DOG'S life cannot be equated to that of a human being! Frank
I'm as much of a dog lover as everyone else, and I'll put this on another level. The police are constrained by laws and policies regarding how they may (and may not) treat a citizen. Dogs cannot be afforded the same protection as the police because they are incapable of being held to such standards. Additionally, the police are the ones using the dogs to avoid such accountability and who are putting the dogs in harm's way...the dog has become an agent of the police, minus the constraints. For those of us who love dogs, but mostly for the above accountability reasons, I would say that K-9s should never be inserted into situations where they interact with citizens. Those who believe that they should be are tacitly admitting that a dog's life is lesser than a human's life...which is why the dogs are being substituted for the humans in the first place in those situations.