Memphis SWAT Shoot Guard Dog

Date: July, 2011
Location: Memphis, TN
Link to article

Not much information to go on, except that SWAT shot and killed a "guard dog" of unknown breed and unknown circumstances.

Unknown if the dog survived.

SWAT Team Kill Dog For Standing Up

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/abc11_investigates&id=8140686

Durham, North Carolina

April, 2011

Breed: Labrador Retriever

Since this dog is a socially acceptable breed, everyone is all pissed off that she was shot and killed by SWAT! If the dog was a Pit Bull, Sheba’s death because she stood up would have been chalked up to being, you know, one of those dogs.

Sheba is seen in the video standing up and bam! SWAT officers immediately open fire on the non-threatening, standing dog, killing her.

The gun was fired in the direction of exposed bystanders.

Columbia SWAT Kill Barking Dog

A SWAT team was used to enter a home and confiscate a small amount of marijuana. In the process, a barking dog was killed and another dog wounded. There is video, and you can hear the dog bark, then scream in pain and agony as she is shot. No officer can be heard yelling at the dog - you hear a couple barks, then an immediate gun shot, followed by screaming, then more gunshots to kill the dog.

A child was present.

Howard county sued by owners of dog killed in no knock raid

Back in 2008, a couple's dog was shot and killed during the execution of a no-knock warrant performed by the paramilitary SWAT. They are now suing Howard County over the raid. The two were acquitted of any charges and it was an acquaintance at the resident in possession of drugs, not the couple themselves (who have no prior criminal record).

I'm not necessarily buying all the claims made in the lawsuit, but SWAT has been known to shoot dogs through screen doors and, in another Maryland case, shot and killed dogs running away from them so I don't find it surprising they might take out the dog(s) first.

The article also refers to the February 2009 incident in which Howard County SWAT invaded a home and killed the family's dog. In the article above, officials claim Howard County SWAT had a really good reason to invade the home - stolen weapons. That were never found, by the way, and that had nothing to do with the family actually in residence at the time (the step-son was the guilty party and hadn't lived there for three years).

SWAT shoots chained dog, hits bystander w/ bullet

A man has been wounded and a chained dog is now dead after Palm Beach SWAT (paramilitary) "served" a search warrant in an "ongoing investigation" by opening fire on a dog.

The dog was chained.

This story is missing an appallingly large amount of information. What was the search warrant for? Did police enter the property or remain on the porch? If the dog did attack, why is there no mention of injuries? What are these "non-lethal" methods SWAT speaks of?

The wounded man was hit by a ricochet and was not part of the investigation. He's very lucky. This is, of course, a problem with discharging weapons in a residential area. Over a chained animal, no less.

And even though four officers took out a chained dog, injuring a bystander, none of the officers have been put on paid administrative leave.

Oh and news agencies have different takes on this story:
West Palm Beach man recovering....
vs.
Police kill pit bull during search warrant

St. Paul SWAT drug raid and across the pond

A SWAT team in St. Paul shot and killed three dogs during a drug raid. They knew the dogs were present. The fourth dog was confined and left unharmed.

A sad story out of England where two dogs were killed by police while defending their master's body. Their owner had died of natural causes. When paramedics arrived, the dogs were obviously agitated and felt threatened so they stood guard over their owner's body.. One dog was shot and killed instantly, the other ran away. When he was cornered, the dog was tasered and taken to a shelter. Shelter employees claim he was "too aggressive" and he was subsequently euthanized...even though the owner had a partner who would have taken the dog back.

Two dogs killed after narcotics raid revealed nothing

Buffalo narcotics officers shot and killed two family pets in a drug raid. One dog was a 5-yr-old boxer/pit bull mix who was shot three times for jumping off the couch. The other dog, a 4-yr-old pit bull, was shot from behind as he ran away from officers.

The raid was for hydrocdone pills, like vicodin and apparently was SO very important that officers just had to storm the house, kill the dogs and then scratch their heads in wonderment when, surprise!, no pills were found. This was a case where the owners could have been given ample opportunities to secure their dogs. Instead, some trigger-happy officer blew away two family pets.

Police officials claimed that "these dogs are trained to kill".

Oh, really?

Like this cattle dog in Maryland who was shot to death during a no-knock paramilitary raid on a home....for a person who hadn't lived there for three years? Or this Dalmatian in Florida who was shot during a drug search for barking at an officer while securely enclosed in her backyard? Or maybe these two Labs in Maryland were also trained to kill? Afterall, they were running away from officers during a paramilitary (SWAT) no-knock raid. Running away is now the new "trained to kill" behavior. Or maybe it's the four dogs shot and killed by police in Omaha all during drug raids; with one exception, none of the dogs attempted to eat anybody.

I just cannot imagine ALL of these dogs are trained to kill, especially when many of them are in homes where no drug activity occurs. As to the recent Buffalo case - is the possibility of finding vicadin pills really worth an automatic death sentence for two beloved pets? Not to mention the valid fear that the officer could have misfired and hit the owner of the dogs sitting five feet away. Or that the house was in a residential area and the guy was shooting with a large shotgun. The officer's response seemed excessive, at best, criminal at worst. Sadly, it's doubtful the officer will receive any proper training on how to interact with dogs and their owners or any fines or jail time for killing two family pets.

SWAT: No knock warrant results in death of dog

An Australian cattle dog is dead after SWAT paramilitary raided a house using a no-knock warrant.

Just imagine, for one moment, you, your 12-yr-old kid and your spouse are sitting down to watch some television when the door is blown open and a dozen heavily armed, uniformed people storm in. Then imagine your dog doing what a dog does when threatened and being shot at three times. A bullet misses and lands in your mattress.

That's what happened to the family in the article when Howard County SWAT invaded their home.

The search warrant was issued for the family's stepson who hasn't lived at the home in three years. On the search warrant someone had scratched out one person's name and handwritten the stepson's in its stead. I mean, really, at least get a no-knock warrant with the correct person typed on the document.

The owner of the dog has filed a complaint but so far no disciplinary action has been taken against any of the officers who invaded this family's home.

The Maryland legislature is introducing a bill that would, at the very least, require monthly reports to the attorney general on no-knock warrants and SWAT activity. This is in result to the tragic death of two dogs when SWAT invaded the Berywn Heights mayor's home. The mayor was not guilty of any crime and one of his dogs had been running from police when he was shot in the back.

What's wrong with SWAT

In August of 2008, the lives of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity and her mother Georgia were irrevocably altered when Prince George County SWAT and police officials stormed their house and shot their two friendly dogs (one as he ran away from the officers). The dogs died.

The Washington post recently published a great article on what the Calvo's went through that fateful day.

Of course, this story is truly more about the dogs (though the emotional impact is powerful and heart-wrenching) - it is about how faulty the "War on Drugs" really is. Innocent people have died and been emotionally scarred because of these no-knock warrants, all on the quest for a few pounds of pot or cocaine. Many dogs have died because they had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time doing what dogs do and defending their pack (or, if you're in Omaha, sitting at the end of a chain).

Americans have defended their right to privacy and the sanctity of their homes since Revolutionaries denounced British soldiers entering homes and businesses with impunity to search for contraband rum and tea and generate taxes for the British Crown. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures. But civil libertarians argue that this constitutional protection has been seriously eroded in recent decades, largely as an unintended consequence of the nation's war on drugs.

In Balko's summary, paramilitary police units called Special Weapons Attack Teams, or SWATS, grew out of the social unrest of the 1960s. They were used to quell protesting migrant farm workers led by Cesar Chavez, then against urban rioters and in a shootout with the Black Panthers in Los Angeles. Balko writes: "Until the 1980s, SWAT teams and other paramilitary units were used sparingly, only in volatile, high-risk situations such as bank robberies or hostage situations. Likewise, 'no-knock' raids were generally used only in situations where innocent lives were determined to be at imminent risk. America's War on Drugs has spurred a significant rise in the numbers of such raids, to the point where in some jurisdictions drug warrants are only served by SWAT teams or similar paramilitary units, and the overwhelming numbers of SWAT deployments are to execute drug warrants."

and

Last year, Prince George's police deployed SWAT teams to serve search warrants more than 400 times, a police spokesman said. The department's narcotics unit now deploys its SWAT team to serve the overwhelming majority of its search warrants, Maj. Andy Ellis said. The Prince George's Police budget shows that the county expects to spend at least $2.5 million this year reaped from assets seized in drug raids.

and

Many victims of botched or abusive drug raids are poor minorities whom the public is unlikely to hear about or rally around, Boyd said. Legal immunity granted to police makes it difficult for victims to successfully sue for compensation, he said.

You can read the entire Washington Post article HERE.

Even more provocative is The Cato Institute's tracking of botched paramilitary (e.g. SWAT) police raids.