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November 2017
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Deputy Shoots Family's Terrier; Complains About Cost Of The Bullet

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In disturbing, but sadly unsurprising news, a law enforcement officer is being accused of killing a family pet -- one that very likely did not need to be killed. Kelli Sullivan's dog was shot by a sheriff's deputy when the deputy responded to Sullivan's call about being harassed by a neighbor. Sullivan soon learned why you're taking the lives of everyone and everything into your own hands by asking for law enforcement assistance.

The dog was 12 pounds, and Sullivan says about ankle height on most people. She said the dog did not seem like a threat to the officer. She said after the deputy had taken care of a neighborhood disturbance, her son’s dog escaped from their house."The dog got out. I walked to the end of the driveway to try to catch her. My daughter was running around trying to catch her. I thought we were going to go back in the house. I walked back to the house opened the door, turned around, (and) boom, he shot her," Sullivan said. "It was a horrific event. He shot the dog up close and blew her skull apart in front of my children. Like her eyeballs were out of her head."According to Sullivan, the dog had no history of biting and was behaving normally for a dog of her breed.
Sullivan's dog was a rat terrier -- a breed not really known for aggressive behavior. Nonetheless, the deputy's report said the dog posed enough of a threat he had no choice but to shoot it in the head.
In his official report, the deputy said, “…alone [sic] came the house dog charging at me in an aggressive manner and grabbing at my leg and my boots. I swung my baton at the dog to scare it away. The house dog then charge [sic] at me again in an aggressive manner and once swung my baton. The [sic] Mr. Sullivan couldn’t contain the dog. For a third time the house dog charged at me in an aggressive manner I then fire one shot with my hand gun and killing the dog [sic].”
But that's not the end of it, although that would probably be more than enough. A deputy unable to handle the "aggressive manner" of a 12-lb. dog is going to have severe difficulties handling aggressive behavior by full-grown humans. Nope, the deputy then allegedly had the audacity to:A. Claim his killing of the dog was in the family's best interest, andB. Complain about the cost of the bullet.
According to Kelli Sullivan, after killing Leia, the deputy told her that if she had bitten him, he’d have to sue, and that shooting her was the better option. He then told her, “It was a shame I had to waste that bullet, it was a really expensive hollow-point bullet.”
At this point, all we have is the family's story. There's no video of the incident and the sheriff's department has yet to respond to calls for comments and/or statements. But the allegations are far from unusual. This is something that happens dozens of times per day in the US.
The exact number of dogs killed by law enforcement officers is difficult to quantify because there is no official record of these deaths across American agencies. Laurel Matthews, a program specialist with the US Department of Justice’s community-oriented policing services office, says fatal encounters are an “epidemic” and estimates that 25 to 30 pet dogs are killed daily by police.
If there's ever going to be a downturn in this number, it starts with the police departments and runs right through the court systems. Police departments can provide better training, equipping officers with knowledge and techniques to better ensure animals make it out of these "interactions" alive.But the bigger step towards lowering this number (and, consequently, the number of humans killed by police officers) has to be taken by the nation's courts. At this point, pretty much all officers have to do to justify killings is claim they feared for their safety. In cases involving humans and their pets, this is usually enough to allow them to escape civil liability, if not criminal liability. Unless there's plenty of evidence stating otherwise -- something that usually includes recordings of officers' statements and accidents during these incidents -- the courts will usually find it impossible to discount the subjective feelings of the involved officers.The silver lining at this point is more and more courts are viewing the killing of people's pets by law enforcement officers as something potentially in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
[A]ccording to Charlotte-based attorney Scott MacLatchie, who represents law enforcement agencies and officers in civil suits. "Six (out of 11) federal circuit courts of appeal have ruled that the killing of a pet does represent a Fourth Amendment seizure," he says.
Let's not forget another basic fact: pets aren't instantly cowed by uniforms and waved weapons. Animals respond to certain stimuli and having strangers invading their territory seldom makes them comfortable. Owners can do whatever's possible to restrain pets, but what owners see as normal, non-threatening behavior by their pets is often seen as potentially harmful by people trained specifically to see potential danger in almost every interaction. And for most pets, the more aggressive the stranger is -- especially one using every physical tool available to "secure the scene" -- the more defensive they'll be.The problem is no one can "cop-proof" their home. It's impossible. What seems normal to them seems suspicious or threatening to law enforcement officers. They can't stop pets from running to greet the new person in the house in whatever fashion the pet normally greets strangers. They can't stop people from walking out of rooms or through doors unexpectedly. All they can do is hope everything goes as uneventfully as possible. That completely skews these interactions. Those with the hours and years of specialized training are expected to be treated like heavily-armed babies -- shielded from surprises, loud noises, or unexpected movements. And, for the most part, the courts have treated these completely backwards rules of engagement as completely normal expectations.That's how you end up with dead 12-lb. terriers and cops complaining about the cost of bullets: the constant shifting of responsibility back on the untrained citizens who thought they might end up with some help, rather than a dead pet, when they called the police.

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Miami City Attorney Tries To Erase Photos Of Fired Firefighters From The Internet

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Six firefighters fired over a racist incident are the possible, but unlikely, beneficiaries of Florida public records law. Here's how they ended up fired, via the Miami Herald, which broke the story. (h/t Boing Boing)

Miami’s fire chief on Thursday blasted six fired firefighters accused of draping a noose over a black colleague’s family photos, and released images of the “egregious and hateful” vandalism.Photos of the scene at Fire Station 12, located on Northwest 46th Street near Charles Hadley Park, show that someone took a black lieutenant’s family photos out of their picture frames, drew penises onto the pictures, then reinserted them in their frames and placed them on a wood shelf next to a teddy bear figurine. Someone also hung a noose made of thin, white rope over one of the photos.
Five more firefighters are still under investigation. The six firefighters -- Capt. William W. Bryson, Lt. Alejandro Sese, David Rivera, Harold Santana, Justin Rumbaugh and Kevin Meizoso -- were all terminated after the completion of a Miami police investigation. We know their names and what they look like, thanks to the Miami Herald's reporting and an apparent misstep by a Miami government agency.
On Thursday, ahead of a press conference scheduled for Friday morning with Miami’s mayor, Miami Fire Rescue also released the fired firefighters’ department photos even though Florida law exempts pictures of current and former firefighters from disclosure under the state’s broad public records laws.
Now, the city -- facing a possible lawsuit from the firefighters union -- is throwing CTRL-Z notices at local news agencies.
Just after midnight Friday morning, an assistant city attorney wrote an email to multiple news outlets demanding that the media “cease and desist from further showing the firefighters pictures in your coverage of this event.” Jones said the photos of the six men had been released accidentally.“As former first responders, their photos are confidential and exempt under Florida’s public disclosure law and should not have been released,” wrote Kevin R. Jones.
Too bad. That's a problem for the city, not journalists. The Miami Herald will be keeping the photos up. So will WPLG, which interviewed the victim of the racist acts. It's been relegated to a sidebar, but the photos are still there.
ABC News has also kept the photos up, albeit as an image that lasts only as long as it takes for the autoplaying video to load. Those looking for a longer-lasting image will have to make do with the sidebar thumbnail.
The images are already out there. Telling the media to unpublish the photos is a ridiculous move. The union plans to sue the city for releasing the photos, but that's not going to do anything to return the internet to the state it was in prior to the accidental photo dump.As for the firefighters inadvertently left unprotected by this "violation" of Florida's open records law, it would seem the best way to keep your photo from being displayed in stories about racist acts by public servants is refraining from engaging in bigoted acts while employed as public servants. Trying to turn online media sources into self-serving time machines only ensures maximum visibility.

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