What you gonna do, whatcha gonna do when dey come for you?

I hope you were humming the theme from the Fox show “Cops”, because that is what I was going for.

Of course, I changed the wording from Bad Boys to Bad DOG.

Local story from Kansas City Missouri.

Monday afternoon, police came to a home on Roberts Street looking for a man with outstanding warrants. Officers are accused of pepper-spraying the dog before they searched a duplex.
“They had guns drawn when they first got up here.
Dog was on his leash, and they pepper sprayed him,” neighbor Helen Spencer told KMBC’s Bev Chapman

The cops pepper sprayed a dog on a chain. Because the dog was…. barking at them. Did they honestly think that pepper spray would calm the dog?

OK, well maybe the dog was vicious breed… like a pit bull. Nope. Labrador mix. Just barking at strangers in his yard.

So, pepper spray him. That will certainly make the dog more docile, right? Nope.

After pepper spraying the chained dog, the police entered the residence (while NO ONE WAS HOME!) and searched for a fugitive for whom they had a warrant. By the time the police exited the home, the dog had become so agitated it had broken loose of the chain. It went after the police.

So, did they pepper spray it again?

Nope. They drew their service weapons and shot the dog. They shot “Smokey” in front of all the neighbors who were standing outside watching.

“He’s a fairly strong dog. He managed to break the chain,” said Jim
Conaway, the dog’s owner.
Neighbors said they watched as police shot the dog, a 5-year-old Labrador mix named Smokey. “I was standing by the fence.
When they shot him, they just unloaded on him,” Spencer said.

I’m not sure how the cops can justify deadly force when confronted by a 5 year old lab mix named “Smokey”… but I’m sure it’ll be a good read. Well, at least the cops didn’t hit any bystanders when they took out this menace to society.

Police officers are only supposed to draw and fire their weapons when they, or the public, are in immediate danger of great bodily harm. I hardly think a 5 year old labrador with only his teeth to use as a weapon meets that standard.

But, reading these stories with my libertarian views, I see this all to often. The “macho” gung ho effects of the militarization of the police forces in the United States. Everything nowadays is a “war”. The WAR on crime. The WAR on drugs. The WAR on illegal aliens. Problem is, police officers aren’t supposed to be involved in WAR. They are PEACE officers, not soldiers on a mission.

And they certainly weren’t at war with Smokey. He was only doing what any dog would do… protecting his home.