The Police States of America

I’m just shaking my head over this one. I would never have thought that a tactical police response was necessary in the wake of a neighbor dispute over dog shit.

Resident Kim Polk told WITI that it all began when a neighborhood man’s dog had crapped in her yard on Saturday afternoon.

“His dog proceeded to soil my grass and I asked him you are going to pick that up because I don’t want that sitting on my grass,” Polk recalled.

She said that the man responded by kicking the dog poop into a pile of leaves she was raking, and then threatening her family’s dog with a bow and arrow.

When Polk’s husband went to talk to the man about the confrontation, she said that he came to the door armed.

“He closed the door and came back to the door with a machete in his hand, a very long machete so at that time my husband backed up off the property and I had my daughter call the police,” Polk explained

WTF?!

Your response when confronted about your dog shitting in someone’s yard is to arm yourself? You can’t talk about the issue like an adult? You want to get all macho and puff up your chest and threaten someone else? This. Is. Over. Dog. Shit. And the dog owner was in the wrong (in more than one way, given that he threatened to kill their dog).

Of course now that the cops have been called, the situation got defused and the dog owner apologized to his neighbors and they lived happily ever after. Yeahbutno.

Disturbing cell phone video posted to YouTube shows tactical officers taking cover behind an armored vehicle, when a small dog runs out of the suspect’s home. The dog appears to turn and head back to the home after spotting the armored vehicle, but officers quickly fire at least two shots and the dog falls to the ground.

“Oh my God!” a person watching from a nearby home can be heard screaming. “They shot the dog. You f*cking a**holes!”

In a statement to the Racine County Eye, Racine Police Chief Art Howell expressed his regret for the dog’s death.

“On a personal level, I am saddened over the loss of a domestic pet that more than likely, had no malice against anyone,” he said. “During this standoff, the dog owner threatened to use a body armor piercing crossbow to kill officers, and this subject threatened to use his dog as a weapon against officers as well. After several hours of dialogue with crisis negotiators, the barricaded subject ultimately made good on his threat to introduce the dog into the active standoff.”

“Officers, who for over three hours were focused on peacefully resolving this crisis through dialogue, were now forced to deal with the distraction and unpredictability of having the subject’s dog moving through the scene of this active encounter at a critical time.”

They couldn’t deal with the dog, so they shot and killed it. I just can’t even…

Does this need to be a part of police training in the future? “This is how to deal with a small dog when it is distracting you from peaceful talks with a guy who isn’t really a threat to you”

Then there’s the fact that an armored vehicle was brought in. This was a fucking dispute over dog shit. Yeah, the dog owner was waaaaaaaaaaay over the top, but the cops couldn’t have just sent two officers over to give this guy a stern talking to?  ‘Dog shit+threatening your neighbor ‘now requires police show up in an armored vehicle? This requires crisis negotiations? I know they have to make use of the military equipment somehow, but maybe they could use it when, oh, I don’t know–there’s a hostage situation??!

And let me return again to the dog. Take a look at the video and see for yourself how terrifying this dog was:

Clearly they were all about to be mauled by Cujo.

Look at those cops. They’re in full gear. They have an armored vehicle. They have their own dog (german shepard by the looks of it). They have weapons.  All of that is deployed against a guy with a machete, a bow and arrow, and Toto. The cops  were afraid of…what exactly? Did they think the dog was going to deploy it’s sonic scream and go all Banshee on their asses?

The cops acted as if the dog owner was a terrorist.  Their response has become an all too common reality here in the United States. Cops treating civilians like they’re the enemy. Deploying excessive force for minor infractions. This is not what the cops should be doing. This is not how they should be acting.  This is not serving and protecting. This is terrorizing the civilian population and making them fear you. Yet we’ve normalized this behavior and it’s going to keep continuing and unfortunately will probably escalate. Welcome to the Police States of America.

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The Police States of America
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2 thoughts on “The Police States of America

  1. 1

    What good is it to have all the pretty-shiny high-tech toys, if you never get to use them? Expecting them to leave the aircraft carrier tank at home is just against human nature.

    (This comment was manufactured in a facility that also deals with nuts. And sarcasm. Deep, thick, rich, chocolate-y sarcasm.)

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