Quote :

"GOVERNMENT GOONS MURDER PUPPIES! - RADLEY BALKO, policy analyst with the Cato Institute, Reason April 2006 IN THE COURSE of researching paramilitary drug raids, I've found some pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gun-point only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all five.) Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked up are the ones where the SWAT officers shoot and killl the family dog. I have two dogs, which may have something to do with it. But I'm not alone. A colleague tells me that when he and other libertarian commentators speak about the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco many people tend to doubt the idea that the government was out of line when it invaded, demolished, and set fire to a home of peaceful and mostly innocent people. But when the speaker mentions that the gov-ernment also slaughtered two dogs during the siege, eyes light up, the indifferent get angry, and skeptics come around- Puppycide, apparently, goes too far. One of the most appalling cases occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona, the home of Joe Arpaio, self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America." In 2004 one of Arpaio's SWAT teams conducted a bumbling raid in a Phoenix suburb. Among other weapons, it used tear gas and an armored personnel carrier that later rolled down the street and smashed into a car. The operation ended with the targeted home in flames and ex-actly one suspect in custody—for out-standing traffic violations. But for all that, the image that sticks in your head, as described by John Dougherty in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, is that of a puppy trying to escape the fire and a SWAT officer chasing him back into the burning building with puffs from a fire extinguisher. The dog burned to death. In a massive 1998 raid at a San Francisco housing co-op, cops shot a family dog in front of its family, then dragged it outside and shot it again. When police in Fremont, Califor-nia, raided the home of medical mari-juana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine tunes. Filgo himself was never charged. Last October police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of mari-juana possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the kill in front of the family- They seized eight grams of marijuana, equal in weight to a ketchup packet. In January a cop en route to a drug raid in Tampa, Florida, took a short cut across a neighboring lawn and shot the neighbor's two pooches on his way. And last May, an officer in Syracuse, NewYork, squeezed off several shots at a family dog during a drug raid, one of which ricocheted and struck a 13-year-old boy in the leg. The boy was handcuffed at gun-point at the time. There was a dog in the ragweed bust I mentioned, too. He got lucky--He was only kicked across the room. I guess the P.R. lesson here for drug war opponents and civil libertarians is to emphasize the plight of the pooch, America's law-and-order populace may not be ready to condemn the practice of busting up recreational pot smokers with osten-tatiously armed paramilitary police squads, even when the SWAT team periodically breaks into the wrong house or accidentally shoots a kid. I mean, somebody was probably breaking the law, right? But the dog? That loyal, slobbery, lovable, wide-eyed, fur-lined bag of unconditional love? Dammit, he deserves better."

OK Hempster...bring it on!

[Edited on March 2, 2006 at 1:57 AM. Reason : .]

3/2/2006 1:54:52 AM

This is reflective of Chit Chat. I've noticed that when a person's father or mother or friend or significant other die, it's a joke on that board. But when it's somebody's dog, everybody's sympathetic. Very odd relationship between people and dogs.

3/2/2006 2:23:39 AM

Odd nothing, I've been stabbed in the back by literally every person I know,* but never by any of my dogs.

*-Excluding, of course, the fine employers that do pay me in the prompt fashion required by law

3/2/2006 2:45:51 AM

^^I have an irrational fear of dogs. Therefore, being surrounded by them and their owners who say that their dog would never hurt me, I hate dogs. So reading about puppies get killed gets the from me.

3/2/2006 7:51:02 AM

This story makes me

Quote :

"I have an irrational fear of dogs.....I hate dogs"

Then your opinion doesn't count, dipshit. Go see a shrink, damn.

3/2/2006 8:13:05 AM

Our dogs accept us so completely. We do not have to rationalize to them or apologize for any of our personality flaws. They are probably the only creatures on God's green earth that totally accepts us for what we are. Their only happiness is to share our lives with them. This connection runs so deeply that almost any negative story in which a dog gets hurt, sends a shiver down to our soul's core.

3/2/2006 9:30:21 AM

they accept you because you feed them

they have no clue how fucked up you are

3/2/2006 10:12:13 AM

^lol, Lokken makes a good point

3/2/2006 10:22:32 AM

^^ To an extent, but they're also a species that has been so heavily bred to work along side man that they're more intune to human feelings than almost any other creature on the planet (think back to the monkey, chimp, and puppy experiment where the puppy better understood cues from humans than our genetic cousins).

3/2/2006 11:20:27 AM

if im a swat officer raiding a house and i see a big ass akita or pit bull or something coming towards me i am going to shoot it too
and then i would probably put another round into it to make sure it wasnt suffering

3/2/2006 11:25:02 AM

http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=391762

3/2/2006 12:56:45 PM

Quote :

"if im a swat officer raiding a house and i see a big ass akita or pit bull or something coming towards me i am going to shoot it too and then i would probably put another round into it to make sure it wasnt suffering"

Would you then proceed to joke about the kill with your SWAT buddies, in front of the family?

3/2/2006 1:02:32 PM

Quote :

"they accept you because you feed them "

Not entirely. You can treat a dog like absolute shit and it might still be fanatically devoted.

3/2/2006 1:05:33 PM

i doubt that

unless there was a history of you being kind to it or feeding it before

a dog isnt gonig to stick around you if all it knows is you treat it like shit.

3/2/2006 1:11:03 PM

Quote :

"Would you then proceed to joke about the kill with your SWAT buddies, in front of the family?"

if i thought it would help me get to information i would say all kinds of shit to get under their skin

[Edited on March 2, 2006 at 1:24 PM. Reason : .]

3/2/2006 1:24:10 PM

what i want to know is

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT

3/2/2006 1:31:37 PM