Dog Shooting Remains Controversial

That story of the shooting of a Husky still has four legs around here, though the shooting of a family man sitting in his car at a traffic light near BWI may supersede it. Quail Run will be voting on whether to name the dog run after Bear-Bear. Among her several blog entries on the controversial shooting, Jill Rosen of the Baltimore Sun’s, unleashed, found herself appalled that the officer used hollow point bullets in his 9mm. Her posts have generated many comments sympathetic to the dog and unsympathetic to the officer, but among all the enraged comments is an informative one:

As a former police officer there are a few things I feel compelled to say. The focus of the case should be if the use of deadly force was appropriate. If so the ownership of the gun and type of ammunition used is not relevant to the case at hand.

Federal law allows law enforcement to carry off duty across state lines.

Most LEOs carry a personal weapon off duty. As a patrol officer I carried a full size 5″ pistol as my duty side arm. I did not want to lug that big heavy thing around town when off duty. I carried a smaller lighter more concealable firearm off duty. This was allowed by law and department policy.

Hollow point ammunition is standard for LEO and civilian self defense use. It is the appropriate round both on and off duty.

All of this being said I think the use of force in this case is questionable and look forward to reading the report in detail. Even if the report does not indicate a law was broken the civil courts are an option as is administrative sanction by the employing agency.

That said, there seems to be doubt as to whether the officer was actually a federal officer or some sort of contract security officer working at a federal base.