ht_cisco_the_dog_killed_thg_120416_wmain

Reader DH has some good news for our four-legged friends:

Canines across Texas are rejoicing, as HB 593 which requires law enforcement officers to receive canine encounter training, passed the Texas Senate today. It will be on its way to the Governor next to sign into law. Chief Art Acevedo, when not actively trying to impede, remove or otherwise diminish the citizenry’s 2A rights, heads the Austin PD which has waged pretty much unrestricted warfare on the canine population over the past couple of years . . .

These include some pretty well publicized executions of pets while investigating the wrong house, entering property or pretty much any time they’ve felt like it. Hopefully, this will give them paws (sic) for a moment, before escalating from encounter straight to deadly force.

As the antis like to say…if it saves one life…right?

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83 COMMENTS

  1. HB 593 which requires law enforcement officers to receive canine encounter training, Sooo….exactly what are the cops supposed to do when they encounter the canine, besides shoot it?

    • Why, we are supposed to allow dogs to bite us so everyone can feel warm and fuzzy inside. We are also suppose to allow someone to take our gun and shoot us so we can justify defending ourselves. We are supposed to allow thugs to loot and injure us so we are politically correct.

      • And yet the mailman, gas man, electric man, UPS man, FedEx guy, and everyone else are able to do their jobs without getting bit and/or shooting dogs. Especially poignant considering only a small few of them carry pepper spray and none tasers, which begs the question, what the hell is wrong with you guys?

        • Ya, if I had a dog, and he interfered with my ups guy bringing me my Amazon orders…. I would be the next dog whisper’r. When any brown or white van pulled up, they would sit on a little area, lie down and be silent. I would find a way. My R/C car parts shall suffer no delays, if at all possible. I mean, that gear you stripped while trying to jump your house has to be replaced asap, to try again, right?

        • ^ This.

          Don’t like it, get another job. You serve the PEOPLE. Not yourself.

        • “Yes. Yes you are. That’s why we pay you.”

          No. No we’re not. We are under absolutely no obligation to allow anyone or anything to wound, permanently disfigure, or kill us so you can feel like you live in your Andy Griffith dream world. I know you disagree, but the courts come down on my side, so you’re just going to have to live with that. If you want me to take those kinds of risks, you will have to quit crying like a child when we break a few eggs in the process. As it is right now, most of these people complaining about the way we handle business are cowards that have never been exposed to actual danger.

          “Don’t like it, get another job. You serve the PEOPLE. Not yourself.”

          Its cute you actually think you have the power to tell me to get another job, but you don’t. I get paid well for what I do and I’m good at it, so I think I’ll stay here. And let’s be honest – there’s not a thing you can do about it. Of course, you’ll make some sort of vague threat, or put out some nonsense about how people don’t trust the police, but its all worthless chatter. At the end of the day, we will do the job the way we want to do it, and as soon as the media finds something new to complain about, it will be back to business as usual. Get used to having me around, because I’m not going anywhere.

        • If “officer” is trolling GR8B8M8…

          If not, you’re a disgrace to the badge and the uniform. You roll in a cruiser, armed and armored. You have multiple armed backups only seconds away. Your job is less dangerous than the guy who manages the landscape guys who do my lawn.

          Meanwhile, the rest of us face much higher risk of death at the hands of bad guys everyday. Many without the ability to legally carry, none who have the instant backup and unlimited resources of the taxpayer you are to serve. My white self is in North STL on a regular basis with nothing but my sidearm. Spare us the histrionics. You’re in the wrong job. Try selling lingerie, more in line with your testicular fortitude.

        • “you’re a disgrace to the badge and the uniform.”

          Heh. One time, a woman called me something similar to that in her living room because I was serving an arrest warrant on her 30 year old son. He was charged with, and later convicted of, sodomizing a ten year old boy.

          If that’s the company you want to keep, more power to you.

        • I’m calling you that for your attitude, which is completely at odds with what your job is supposed to be.

          I’ve seen more than a few with your view, they’re the guy who eagerly carries the squad drop gun and has no hesitation to lie to cover the most egregious bad scenarios.

          Eventually it comes around, and it’s never good.

        • Officer says:
          May 5, 2015 at 21:53

          You’re right, you are not obliged to get bitten. But you are obliged to use common sense.

          The last part of your rant should be satire, but sadly I don’t think you meant it that way. You are the kind we certainly do not need.

        • Its cute you actually think you have the power to tell me to get another job, but you don’t. I get paid well for what I do and I’m good at it, so I think I’ll stay here. And let’s be honest – there’s not a thing you can do about it. Of course, you’ll make some sort of vague threat, or put out some nonsense about how people don’t trust the police, but its all worthless chatter. At the end of the day, we will do the job the way we want to do it, and as soon as the media finds something new to complain about, it will be back to business as usual. Get used to having me around, because I’m not going anywhere.

          You are what is wrong with America.

      • Michael Brown was a good shoot. James Boyd was a disgusting execution by psychotic thugs with badges. Sadly, many cops don’t seem to know the difference.

        No, you aren’t expected (by most folks anyway) to stand there and take a bullet. But you are required to take a few risks. I don’t give two good flyin’s if you go home at night if it means the ongoing slaughter of those you are sworn to serve and protect just so you have to take no chances. You perform a job that isn’t statistically dangerous compared to driving a delivery truck, being a roofer, or even being a supervisor of lawn care professionals. (Or myriad other jobs done by tens of millions of “us”.) On the slim chance you do get killed on the job, it’s 50/50 that it’s in a traffic accident. I get it, playing the ‘life on the line’ bullshit has yielded gravy salaries and pensions.

        Nothing could be further from the truth, and actually believing that delusion tripe? You’ll be crawling into a bottle, coked out, h’d out, beating your SO, or off the reservation before you pull your 20. Seen it many times. It’s a frakkin’ job. Be nice to people, even the animals, and they will generally be nice to you. The ones that actually might hurt you are unfazed by the bravado and assholery.

        One grandfather and one uncle sheriff. One grandfather Sgt. CPD (Chicago). Back in the 50s when it actuallywas kinda dangerous to be a copper. They spin in their graves when they hear pansies who have no business being cops shooting dogs. If you can’t handle a dog without getting bitten, you need to be washing dishes at McD’s because you’re less qualified to do the job than the postman, paperboy, hell even the Mormans. And if you did? You’d hide it or laugh it off as part of the job. If you need anything more than the baton to deal with even the most vicious single dog, please get out of dealing with actual humans, because if you can’t even handle a dog…

      • Don’t illegally or improperly enter my property and we won’t have a problem.

      • I just cant understand an attitude like yours Greg. The whole “Our job is hard/dangerous, you dont understand, we do what we have to to “get home at the end of our shift””. If anyone thinks police work is the hardest or most dangerous job there is…. I’d like to invite them to come along on a shift mining coal underground. Where people get seriously injured nearly every day.

        There has to be some middle ground between shooting dogs on site and just letting them bite you.

        Simple fact of the matter is that many cops shoot as soon as they think the dog could be a threat. Dogs growl and bark at new people, and if an officer is already in fight mode the dog may be shot.

        To be clear, im refering to situations where the officer thinks a threat is present, or in one where he is making an entry to a house, ect, I’m not suggesting they just walk or drive around blasting innocent pets when there is no other danger or possible danger around.

        • Richard, don’t bring actual facts into this, it’s all about the narrative that gets cops decent salaries and cushy pensions. Because of the BS “danger” they’re in….

      • Today in our area a German Shepherd was shot and killed while police were investigating a burglary at the WRONG house.

      • seriously, it doesn’t hurt that bad to get bit…what big babies you big bad policemen are.

    • A lot of people are just way to afraid of animals these days. I’ve had to go hand to hand with angry dogs, wild hogs, and gators before, and honestly it’s kinda fun. There’s certain things you can learn about fighting animals, for instance, with dogs, if you can manage to grab on to its hind legs and lift it up like a wheel barrow, it can no longer fight you, it has to support itself with its front legs or go face first into the ground, also, if you find your self in a real pickle and the dog is on top of you, grab it’s lower jaw with one hand and bash it on top of the skull with the other, you’ll kill it or break its jaw. And as always, remember the safest place to be on an alligator is on its back, then look for an opportunity to grab it’s mouth and hold it shut. Fun sh** ya’ll.

      • I saw this thing where if you flip a shark on it’s bad, it goes into a trance. Killer whales use it the technique to fight sharks.

    • You bring up a good point. If you or I shoot a police dog, it’s treated the same as shooting an officer. Why not the same treatment for the taxpayers?

  5. Great. Now if they can train cops not to shoot unarmed suspects in the back, we’ll all be safe. Right?

  6. My dogs are like my kids. One is a tiny little guy, and the other is old ft and half blind. If a cop ever shot one of them I would do everything in my power to find him and ………………

    • *Was* gorgeous. Before he was shot dead by a panicky cop who wasn’t even at the right address.

    • + 100

      The deliberate shooting of every dog they can is bad officers secret desire to kill people as well, but the paperwork is still too much to go through. They take it out on the family’s best friend instead.

      If I am outside with my dogs and I see a squad car, I beeline it indoors ASAP. I don’t want my dogs to be their next trophy or “war story” they brag about killing.

  10. They shoot dogs wagging their tails and call it officer safety. How about instead of educating cops in how to better lie about why they shot a dog they instead punish them the same way we would be punished for doing the same. The badge doesn’t confer special rights. The police need to be reminded that they work for “we the people” and serve at our leisure. Not theirs. We need less laws demanding police be educated in how to better shoot a dog and put the power in our hands to remove the bad apples that spoil the entire bunch.

    When an officer breaks the public trust, his badge should be removed immediately. Only to be restored pending an investigation with civilian oversight. Cops policing cops has led to the thin blue line of cops protecting cops.

    • “They shoot dogs wagging their tails and call it officer safety. How about instead of educating cops in how to better lie about why they shot a dog they instead punish them the same way we would be punished for doing the same.”

      An LEO, perhaps on TTAG—can’t remember for sure, observed that in most PD’s there are always one or two cops who seem to do the most dog shooting. I suspect there’s something to this. If you’ve got some dysfunction guys on the force who really, really like to shoot and kill things, dogs have always been fair game. The abundance of horror stories showing up on the ‘net and on YouTube seem to support this.

      Passing a law mandating canine training is a good step but, if dog shooting is institutionalized in a cop shop’s organizational culture, it will be ignored by the cops who get off on shooting people’s pets.

      Take this account, for example. Think this guy is going to pay much attention to a training session? Note that he’s a Sergeant.

      “According to multiple sources, Ardmore Police Sergeant Brice Woolley responded to a call regarding a dog that had escaped and was wandering the neighborhood. “I’m not waiting for animal control,” Sgt. Woolley allegedly stated as he grabbed his shotgun to confront the doomed pooch.

      As pictures show, Sgt. Woolly, who works the day shift patrol in Ardmore, next shot the dog, killing it immediately. “She had done nothing to provoke the officer,” the Change petition, which has been signed over 2,900 times, notes. “Did you see her collar fly off when I shot her? That was awesome,” Brown claims Woolly bragged to the responding animal control officer, who supposedly replied, “We’ll just write in the report that it tried to attack you and others in the neighborhood.”

      Sgt. Woolly has a checkered past with the department. Woolly’s name last year appeared in a complaint lodged by one of his fellow officers, who claimed he suffered “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” among other trauma, at the hands of the department.”

    • +1

      They don’t need stupid classes. They need liability for making bad decisions.

  11. I’ve been in LE for most of my adult life, over 35 yrs, and that tends to put me on the defensive on some LE topics, but not this one. There has always been a minority of officers that shoot dogs that aren’t really a threat, some out of irrational fear, some who just want an excuse to shoot something, and apparently the idiot Chief Art Acevedo has let it get out of hand by either encouraging or simply refusing to discipline a small percentage of Austin PD officers with a propensity for canine kills. Good for the Texas Legislature, whatever it takes to reign in a few cowardly or disturbed officers.

    • Exactly. There are some sickos that like killing and they don’t belong in the police force. Sadly that is one place such people go.

      In Iraq I knew a gunnery sergeant who went out of his way to kill any dog he could find. He convinced the CO that the dogs that congregate at the trash/burn pit a mile away were a danger and he spent as much time as he could over there killing dogs. I hate that man.

      • Then there’s the cops who don’t do anything about such sickos, making them basically accomplices.

    • It’s one thing for outsiders (us) to complain about good cops not criticizing bad cops. But the reality is that change comes from management and, all too often, management is the reason bad cops get hired in the first place . . . and why they continue to be employed. Note for instance that the good officer Wooly—the guy who thought it was “awesome” to kill someone’s pet—I mentioned a little earlier was a Sergeant which means he’d been employed for awhile and received several promotions on the Ardmore, Oklahoma PD. Unless there’s support from the top, trying to get rid of bad cops is a career killer and cops trying to support themselves and keep a family together are no more willing to fall on their sword for a moral principle than most other people.

    • Cheers to you man, good to know you’re not all fucktards. If cops are really concerned about their well being, they should consider that shooting the wrong person’s dog could easily get them killed instead of bitten.

  12. More useless training to increase expenses and time not spent policing.

    Fine with me. It’s safer to waste time in classrooms and spending money on “encounter facilitators” than to actually do anything. We could skip the middleman and stop trying to legislate what consenting adults do in their own home instead of trying to decrease liability for the effects, but whatever…

    • “stop trying to legislate what consenting adults do in their own home”
      What is the House or Senate bill to which you are referring?

      • Why does it have to be a bill? How about the hundreds and thousands of laws regulating personal, non-violent, non-aggressive conduct done in private?

        • ““stop trying to legislate” indicates a current (present tense) attempt to pass laws for future restrictions. In most places these attempts form in a legislature as bills; otherwise the restrictions come about as “regulations” enacted by alphabet agencies.
          How can you know the private conduct performed by consenting adults is neither violent or aggressive?

        • Take a more broad view of ‘trying to legislate’- I was referring to the drug “war” that is the cause of the vast majority of warrant services and other incidents where dogs (and people) are shot during a ‘raid.’

          Now I’m not a huge proponent of legalization OR criminalization but I think it’s a conversation worth having that could actually change things.

        • All the discussion I’ve heard of late is not to make marijuana more illegaler but rather the opposite. Doing the same with other drugs is going to be a hard sell to the public. That could change if part of the discussion came from ‘raid’ officers explaining not only how raids are sometimes necessary but how the police and public are endangered when unnecessary raids are deployed against non-violent drug users.

        • Portugal stopped treating drug addicts (actual, chemical addicts, not just habitual users. MJ isn’t chemically addictive like, say, heroin) and started treating it like a disease. Crime is down, drug use is down. Here, our approach is “build more prisons!” Losing your rights for what you put into your own body. This isn’t the “Land of the Free”.

  15. That is good news, not sure how much it will help. You can’t train out stupid, and that’s what some of these cases are. But hey, if it saves just one life…

  16. If the preferred solution to a bear is pepper spray, then methinks the same solution would apply to a dog with an equally sensitive nose in any situation other than a literal attack — maybe even including an attack. It is often written that psycho killers begin by killing cats and dogs when they are kids. Maybe overzealous and trigger happy police begin by shooting dogs. Not talking about a pack of feral dogs — one dog.

  17. Training won’t amount to much. Actual punishment needs to come to those who violate the public trust.

    • Agreed.

      If my Weimaraner Layla got shot, well, I’m actually not sure what I’d do – probably return fire.

  18. Chief Art Acevedo is an idiot and no friend of ours. Training won’t stop idiot cops from being idiots and the chief from encouraging them to be so. Not just your dog but civilians too. We are no longer citizens, we are a potential danger, just like our dogs. Am I afraid of cops? You bet. Will they shoot my dogs? In a heartbeat with no remorse.

  19. Probably the ONLY thing in the whole US that is not-over-criminalized is harming, killing or stealing pets. Pets are family members and most people spend more time with their pets than their grown children. Pets are not livestock and have a unique relationship as companions. I don’t have children and the new puppy we are raising is about as close as I am going to get.

    Few people have dangerous pets — and if you can’t handle the small risk of a minor injury — get out of LE.

    BTW: This sort of thing was UNHEARD OF when I was kid. NYC in the 1970s was pretty rough — but I don’t recall anyone’s DOG being shot.

  20. Several folks above mentioned the double standard with canine “officers” being “murdered,” while killing one of our canines at the wrong house is “just killing an animal.t” This is only one example of the double standard. Here in TN, state law requires motorists to move over a full lane away, unless totally impossible due to traffic, if an emergency vehicle, i.e, cop car is parked on the shoulder of a highway, after a lady police officer was killed during a stop by a zoned-out tractor-trailer driver in the middle of the night who ran her over on the side of the interstate. Good law, right? Well, it would be, if it applied to all people forced to stop on the shoulder due to a flat or some emergency, but no. Our law says big rigs can just keep on truckin’ in the far right lane if you or I runs out of gas, overheats, etc. Because emergency responders’ lives are worth more than ours, ya see?

    • There is no statute that equates killing a police dog with ‘murder’ in terms of punishment.

      • It’s pretty close in CA. Police canines / K9’s have badges, ID numbers, and sometimes even have body armor. They also have paid funerals if killed in the line of duty.

  21. Dogs’ emotions are easier to read than humans’. Any officer who can’t tell the difference between a dog that is ready to attack and a dog that is being friendly/inquisitive/protective probably can’t read people too well either, which suggests to me that maybe they shouldn’t be cops at all. If they are shooting “innocent” dogs, they are more likely to shoot innocent civilians.

  22. How long is the training? What the curriculum?

    I’ll write it.

    -Don’t be a pr!ck.
    -Dogs love bacon and cheeseburgers.
    -98% of dogs respond positively to an enthusiastic “Hey, pup, how are you?”
    -Dogs don’t like pepper spray – try that first
    -Pepper spray doesn’t kill dogs
    -98% of dogs are flippin’ awesome (some adjustment may be required for little yappy dogs)
    -only shoot a dog if you absolutely have to.

    If only I’d just saved millions in taxpayer money.

    • “-Dogs don’t like pepper spray – try that first”

      Now *there* is something worth pursuing.

      Making it department policy to require pepper spray before shooting a dog.

    • I do wonder when that (to my experience) basic life knowledge left the general populace. Accur81’s rules are correct, and the stuff kids ‘just learned’ by grade school, at least up till the ’70s anyway.

      Everyone should just know this by 5th grade. Like don’t stick your hand on a hot burner, or how to swim. Dealing with dogs is a basic life skill.

    • What the training requirement will do is establish specific statewide guidelines of when lethal force should and should not be used on a dog. Right now there is nothing in place to prevent an idiot like Chief Art Acevedo from ignoring the problem and stonewalling complaints from the public. The training requirement will make it easier to hold LE administration and supervision accountable through vicarious liability. Just to be clear, officers shooting dogs in Texas is a rare occurrence, most Sheriffs and Chiefs don’t tolerate it and never have a problem because most officers have better sense, don’t have an irrational fear of dogs, and do have a normal aversion for killing dogs. Just as with many statewide training requirements, it only takes a few idiots to create the need for such training.

      • Prove it!

        Give me numbers. If you don’t have real numbers, you don’t have any data to support that this Law and mandatory training will work.

        Fact is this is has not done anything for the transparency of this issue. That’s the point of P.R. moves and Laws supported by Police Unions and Associations and THLN. Cover up the Truth, hope the People ignore the issue. Politricks and lies!

        Show me the guidelines and standards that will deter police from shooting! Nothing in the Law establishes this. The folks who funded this told me personally that this can come later, while others in the puppycide movement told me 10-20 years for ending Texas Puppycide. I don’t like liars and bull! And my meter is pinned on the bull arrow right now.

        The fact is nothing has changed, if anything this lazy Law (HB 593) has made it now justified to shoot more dogs in Texas. Bet me.

        Fort Worth Texas got the cannine encounters training for all their officers and this year they killed a one-legged homeless man’s dog with a shotgun. For nada. Justified by training. Your deterrent and It’s not working, and now it’s killing more dogs and the Police are hiding their numbers. Why is that? What do you expect to stop when the Police can’t even come clean, transpareny, deliniate the issue? Nothing. You have only made things worse, much, much worse.

        I have been telling the entire Legislature and the entire Puppycide Texas community that for months and months. And here we are and people who don’t have facts are pushing baseless lies and propaganda.

        I seriosly doubt if any of the trolls that covered and support this Law have one clue what is really going on, why and what it will take. Period. Try to change my mind.

  23. If I got to make the rules, all cops who kill something (dog, human, whatever) would be released to find another job. No bad paper following them, I’m talking about a good shoot, but you only get one. You’re only supposed to fire to save a life, right? It should be really rare.

  24. Learn dogs… a dog may be fluffed up and barking but if that tail is UP your gonna be ok…. If that tail is down… they are coming after you…

  25. As far as I’m concerned, the Castle Doctrine should apply to dogs, in its historical sense: a man can defend his castle against the king. If a cop shoots a dog, the homeowner shooting the cop should be justifiable homicide.

    And for any cops who don’t get that, grow a pair and start arresting your fellow officers who trample the Constitution and regard citizens as serfs. Until then, you deserve no respect.

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