Puppycide

The other day, someone asked Radley Balko why cops seem to shoot so many dogs. It seems Radley has become something of an expert on this subject. He's the go-to guy on what everybody now calls puppycide. And this was his response: Because they can. No training, no consequences. That seemed like a pretty good explanation to me, but New York criminal defense lawyer Scott … [Read more...] about Why Puppycide?

So this Park Forest cop shoots a dog. It's a family dog, Princess, with two children in the house, so I think we can assume it wasn't too vicious. To be fair, the dog was a mixed German Shepard/pit bull, so it probably looked scary. As is common with family dogs that are shot by cops, it was shot in front of its family, Tracy Walker and her 12-year-old son. According to Walker, … [Read more...] about A Puppycide in Park Forest

I'm not a cop hater. It's a hard job, and they don't make the rules they enforce. But I think I hate this cop. The video is not pleasant. Everyone runs into strange dogs----postal workers, firemen, door-to-door salesmen, Jehova's Witnesses, meter readers, telephone line workers, garbage collectors, other cops, and even little kids walking home from school---and we all get by … [Read more...] about More Puppycide

Last week, Prince George's County cops raided the home of Cheye Calvo. They were there to seize 32 pounds of marijuana that had just been delivered by FedEx. Even when the story first broke, it seemed unlikely that Calvo was actually the intended recipient of the drugs, since he's the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. Of course, that didn't stop the county's finest from … [Read more...] about The Changing Story in Prince George’s County

Oh my God. I had no idea. I've been criticizing the Lima, Ohio SWAT team for killing Tarika Wilson, an unarmed woman who was holding her infant son as the team raided her house. In my last post on the subject, I mentioned that the cops also shot the family dogs, which seems to be a favorite sport of SWAT teams. In my very first post on the Lima raid, I wrote this: As SWAT … [Read more...] about The Lima Raid – Why He Shot