I have a very poor view of the police and I won't deny it. But this video proved to be something completely other than what I expected.
A collection of armed offiers fired at a man who claimed he had a gun, threatened he'd shoot and threatened he'd shoot as soon as the dog was released. When the dog was released, he jerked his concealed hand and body towards the officers.
Seeing the dog die is horrible and skews our perception of the event. But when you have a gun and have it trained at a man who claims he's armed with a gun with 13 rounds, claims he is a murderer and will use that gun to kill the dog and police, what exactly are you supposed to do when he calls your bluff?
I'm asking sincerely. I'd love to hear a reason why this is so unacceptable on a base level.
In my opinion, the only things wrong were, they fired 81 rounds, and they put the dogs life, ahead of a humans. Had this guy really had a gun, and shot the dog, he would be prosecuted as a cop killer ,had he live...however, had he lived, he still would be charged with the dogs death, because it wouldn't have been put in harms way, had he complied with officers. I can't justify 81 rounds, but when you have more then one cop, and each officer is trained to fire 2 rounds center mass, there will be more then 1 or 2 rounds that hit the target. I've never been a fan of police dogs, for any other purpose other then sniffing out explosives or drugs. They expect a person to not react to the aggressive attacks of a dog, when human nature tells us that's what we should do, but if you do fight back, you are charged with the same crime as you would've been, if it were a human police officer. I'm not going to sit here and expect anyone to believe dogs are stupid animals, because they're not, but what they are not capable of, is cognizant reasoning. All a dog knows are the commands taught to it, and the inflection of it's handlers tone. If a cop is screaming at you, and you're down on the ground, trying to comply, all that dog hears is him screaming at you, and the dog will naturally react, then as it's shaking it's head, with your arm, or leg in it's mouth, the cop is screaming at you to hold still. Even if the cop manages to control the dog, charges of police brutality against the dog would never occur, or at least I've never heard of that being accepted, or allowed in a court of law. What the cops did do wrong, was fail to wait and see if the guy did shoot the dog, if he did, they had justifiable cause to fire on him, for attempted murder/murder of a police officer, and if he didn't, then the dog would have taken him down, and the cops could have arrested him, and charged him accordingly. The fact is, they send in the dog, to protect THEIR human lives, and to take the bullet, so a human won't have to...and consider the dog, their equal, to deter criminals, from hurting it.
