Absolutely. Assault on an unarmed civilian, clear unnecessary use of force on video, over a stop for a mud flap.
Why didn’t the prosecutor charge him yet? The video isn’t enough evidence?
Presumably he was fired for forgetting to turn his camera off. Not for the action itself.
It's a PR move to try to limit fallout.
Full on criminal investigations take ages, so the firing comes now and by the time the prosecution gets round to criminal charges the police force can have distance themselves nicely in that time.
The state cops were there too and told him not to do it. I'm guessing that was also a factor.
Bingo, they intentionally fired him in such a way that union arbitration will get him a reinstatement where he'll get letters of recommendation and a lateral to another department.
While criminal investigation does take time, yes, that doesn't stop them from arresting people ahead of time if there's even a moderate amount of evidence. I mean, that's never stopped police from arresting "suspicious" black people (eg, someone who simply happened to be black in an area where a crime was allegedly committed by another black person; even if they look nothing alike). Police consistently treat themselves with kid gloves while treating people of colour as hyper dangerous and must be immediately arrested (or shot).
He'll be a new hire in a neighboring County in a couple of months.
This is a resume builder for a lot of cops
Exactly, it should be fired, charged, loss of required policing license if found guilty (or if a police license board decides so, even without conviction)
Currently I'll take just fired and charged, since we don't have policing licenses as of yet.
Which is really strange because clearly they’re a liability that will attract future lawsuits and misconduct. There’s a reason hospitals don’t hire doctors and nurses who got fired from other hospitals for bad behavior. But cops don’t pay out those lawsuits.
Costs will be paid by city or county taxpayers, as the case may be. So no financial pain will ever be felt by the department that hires a shit bag like this.
It may look like you're exaggerating to the casual observer, but as an Ohioan, this exact same scenario happened in my county and the county next to me. An officer handcuffed a mentally disabled woman and drug her down the stairs by her ankles, face down, and roughed her up a bit. He was fired from the Wayne County sheriff's dept and hired onto the Holmes County sheriff's dept the next week.
good. charge his ass. police shouldn't be able to break the law and get away with it
How can you justify releasing a damn dog on someone who ain't doing shit? These kids are more often than not from questionable origin, like a racist system or family, psychopaths, not meant to be the high water mark of justice, and the people they should actually be fucking with, either slip through the nets, or are running the show. Capitalist bootlickers is all it comes down to. I couldn't imagine wanting to be a cop.
When I get pulled over now, I'm always like "damn its a kid", knowing there are zero consequences for their actions, a push from on high to make arrests in any way possible, depending on who needs to get paid that day, doesn't make me feel any better.
I got pulled over last week...for having a dealership border around the license plate. Thats it. LOL. All pretense to see if he liked my face and clothes. I don't think police should be interacting with citizens in this manner, let alone releasing fkn dogs on unarmed people.
Apparently, from another article, it's policy
For context, this city is well outside Columbus and what you'd consider ruralish trashyish
Basically once you get an hour outside the big cities in Ohio it's not much different from the south
Well it's depressing that that's the explanation.
I will never understand why the US government is happy for large sections of its country to essentially operate as if it's the 18th century. It is like someone went back in time and gave them all tractors, and coke (both types) but otherwise they're just carrying on as per.
Because it's like stacking the jury with your friends.
The only people who can really change it are in the same cult party as the ones doing the bad things. It's not going to go anywhere
The moment a government agent chooses to violate someone's rights, they should be assumed to have resigned their position effective instantaneously.
Their actions from that point on are those of a private individual. Their previous status as a servant of the public is no matter; they abandoned that status the moment they forswore their oath of office.
A private individual commanded a dog to attack a harmless member of the public; and the dog obeyed that command and attacked that person.
The private individual is to be charged with a felony, and the dog is to be put down as a danger to humankind.
You had me right up until putting the dog down. I get what you're going for, but the dog was doing exactly what it was trained to do. That in of itself may be a problem, but putting the dog down only serves to add a level of moral and emotional ambiguity in most people's minds. In reality 100% of the blame, culpability, and punishment should land squarely on the officer.
You're right.
To the point the person you're responding to is trying to get at though -- the whole idea of a "police dog" is fucking insane in the first place.
The things police dogs are used for are things police shouldn't be doing, or are complete bullshit. "drug sniffing" is nonsense. Chasing down and attacking people is cruel on any level, either to the person being attacked, or it's cruelty in sending a dog to attack someone armed with various weapons. Either way, the dog shouldn't be part of the situation in the first place.
I'm not sure I completely agree that dogs have no place in law enforcement. I can give a few examples:
Cadaver dogs and tracking hounds are an important part of criminal investigations at times.
Bomb sniffing dogs are definitely an important line of defense.
I think there is also an argument to be made that dogs are extremely useful in specific kinds of tactical situations which I would agree should be restricted to highly specialized and well trained police units.
Where we agree is that the prevelance of K9 units that are used to give false positives that lead to drug arrests, or the gratuitous use of K9 units in normal arrests is not acceptable or warranted. It is also shown to be abused time and time again. But again, I think there is more nuance to the issue which is difficult to account for during the justifiably negative emotional response people are having to this case, and the discussion needs to be had.
In general, an animal with a record of mutilating innocent people mustn't be kept in civilization. Something has to be done with the dog. Send it to a nice farm upstate?
There are all kinds of people with various dog training/skills in this world who take in dogs with problems from not being safe around small animals, or other dogs, or kids, or men, or women, etc.
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find people qualified and willing to take on this kind of dog "problem" (the dog did what it was trained to do, I'm not sure why that would be a problem necessarily. If it attacks someone outside of it's training then I'd be with you).
Hell throw in special training and some kind of state/local tax break for anyone willing and able to sign up for retired police dog owning.
Great. Dog lives.
The original trainer loses their job, though, because we don't need dogs trained to mutilate people.
Yes, the person should be charged with a crime for what he did, but the dog was just following its training as a police dog. They're supposed to do what the handler tells them to do. It's not the dogs fault; it did exactly what it was supposed to do had the situation called for the dog to attack.
Then I suppose the trainer is an accomplice in the crime.
What would you do with the dog then? Send it to a farm? It's trained to attack humans. We don't let a dog like that live in the city.
Police dogs retire all the time. Assuming this highly trained animal goes to a cartaker who doesn't know or issue the commands, that dog is harmless as any other, arguably more so
It sounds like you just have a problem with concept of police dogs in general. That's fine, but it's a separate discussion.
It's trained to attack on command. Remove the person giving commands and the dog no longer attacks.
The dog is not inherently dangerous because it was trained to attack.
The fuck? I was good with everything until the end.
The dog is not a danger to anyone unless the attack command is given. That's the whole point of training them.
Now arrest them.
I like how this is considered politics and not crime.
A few days ago when this popped up, I saw a bunch of comments saying how everyone bets he gets a paid suspension at worst. I'm aware that officers are practically immune from the terrible things they do on the clock. I am at least glad all the commenters that thought no justice at all would happen were wrong.
The union is already fighting it.
That is the union’s job. Just like defense attorneys fight against guilty verdicts for even blatant murderers, the union is representing a union member.
Annnnd that's why cops shouldn't have unions.
The police dept is already loathe to hold officers accountable, we don't need a whole ass union protecting cops from people who already don't want to hurt them.
So you’ve never been in a union that fights for workers to get better pay, reasonable hours, and decent healthcare? I’ve had unions at two jobs and they fought hard to make sure workers were treated fairly. Football players have a union. Many service workers have a union. Unions are not a bad thing.
Unions are not a bad thing, rightwing unions however betray all other unions and undermine the entire system.
I love unions, unions are great, more people should be in them. Just not cops. If all they were doing was fighting for better hours and pay I'd have no problem (acab aside), but police unions go to bat for violent cops who hurt people. Police unions fight to keep those violent cops in those positions of authority, paid by our tax dollars, with a gun, on the streets where their next potential victim waits.
That's a problem for me.
A union doesn't always fight for a union members job. The union will have a contract and if the union member violates the contract or puts the union in a bad light or weakens it's position to fight for it's members as a whole it can absolutely not support them.
A union should be prouder than this. They should want to have better member and other union members shouldnt want to be in an organization with someone who gives them a bad name.
The real question is does he lose his pension?
The tax payers demand to know.
Generally you do lose pension when fired from a police department.
The whole thing is fucking deplorable
Not good enough, not even close.
Firing is not enough. These officers can still get employed by other police departments.
The use of police dogs should be outlawed
There is nothing wrong with police dogs. Officers assigned to handle the dogs can be problematic though, if they don’t have the discipline to put their prejudices aside.
My friend has a dog... good dog, very quiet and likes to play fetch with his toy. Growls and barks exclusively at black people. His owner is not racist. We think it is because a black guy accidentally stepped on his paw (resulting in no permanent harm) about 12 years ago.
Just saying, dogs can be racist as well.
Nonsense, says Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a professor at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine and author of several books on animal behavior, most recently If Only They Could Speak. “Any behavioralist knows that dogs don’t like subsets of people,” he says, and though the most common subsets are broad—strange men or little children—”sometimes it can be quite specific. It could be tall men, or men with beards. It might be men who are wearing big shoes, might be as subtle as men who smoke cigarettes—which can be hard to pick up on—but it can also be black guys.”
There are plenty of things wrong with police dogs.
We shouldn’t be comfortable with dogs mauling suspects. No one would be okay with a police officer stopping a suspect by slicing their leg with a machete.
Being able to consistently and adequately issue a command to a police dog is a myth.
I think the dogs leave too much room for fake ass probable cause. They should only be used for maybe bomb scare or smth. Having them deal with everyday citizens? In the current system police are just trying to make money off charges for their bosses. Get rid of the dogs for now. Maybe in the future we can have nice things.
But because we have an intentionally broken system, that officer will wait a couple months, move two counties to the left and be rehired on another force (and likely promoted).
From cannon? No? Maybe some criminal charges then at least? No?
That's rare.
Not really... cops get fired all the time and then hired again at different places with no issues.
Great, now criminally charge him.
Asshole should be charged
Absolutely. Assault on an unarmed civilian, clear unnecessary use of force on video, over a stop for a mud flap.
Why didn’t the prosecutor charge him yet? The video isn’t enough evidence?
Presumably he was fired for forgetting to turn his camera off. Not for the action itself.
It's a PR move to try to limit fallout.
Full on criminal investigations take ages, so the firing comes now and by the time the prosecution gets round to criminal charges the police force can have distance themselves nicely in that time.
The state cops were there too and told him not to do it. I'm guessing that was also a factor.
Bingo, they intentionally fired him in such a way that union arbitration will get him a reinstatement where he'll get letters of recommendation and a lateral to another department.
While criminal investigation does take time, yes, that doesn't stop them from arresting people ahead of time if there's even a moderate amount of evidence. I mean, that's never stopped police from arresting "suspicious" black people (eg, someone who simply happened to be black in an area where a crime was allegedly committed by another black person; even if they look nothing alike). Police consistently treat themselves with kid gloves while treating people of colour as hyper dangerous and must be immediately arrested (or shot).
He'll be a new hire in a neighboring County in a couple of months.
This is a resume builder for a lot of cops
Exactly, it should be fired, charged, loss of required policing license if found guilty (or if a police license board decides so, even without conviction)
Currently I'll take just fired and charged, since we don't have policing licenses as of yet.
Which is really strange because clearly they’re a liability that will attract future lawsuits and misconduct. There’s a reason hospitals don’t hire doctors and nurses who got fired from other hospitals for bad behavior. But cops don’t pay out those lawsuits.
Costs will be paid by city or county taxpayers, as the case may be. So no financial pain will ever be felt by the department that hires a shit bag like this.
It may look like you're exaggerating to the casual observer, but as an Ohioan, this exact same scenario happened in my county and the county next to me. An officer handcuffed a mentally disabled woman and drug her down the stairs by her ankles, face down, and roughed her up a bit. He was fired from the Wayne County sheriff's dept and hired onto the Holmes County sheriff's dept the next week.
good. charge his ass. police shouldn't be able to break the law and get away with it
How can you justify releasing a damn dog on someone who ain't doing shit? These kids are more often than not from questionable origin, like a racist system or family, psychopaths, not meant to be the high water mark of justice, and the people they should actually be fucking with, either slip through the nets, or are running the show. Capitalist bootlickers is all it comes down to. I couldn't imagine wanting to be a cop.
When I get pulled over now, I'm always like "damn its a kid", knowing there are zero consequences for their actions, a push from on high to make arrests in any way possible, depending on who needs to get paid that day, doesn't make me feel any better.
I got pulled over last week...for having a dealership border around the license plate. Thats it. LOL. All pretense to see if he liked my face and clothes. I don't think police should be interacting with citizens in this manner, let alone releasing fkn dogs on unarmed people.
Apparently, from another article, it's policy
For context, this city is well outside Columbus and what you'd consider ruralish trashyish
Basically once you get an hour outside the big cities in Ohio it's not much different from the south
Well it's depressing that that's the explanation.
I will never understand why the US government is happy for large sections of its country to essentially operate as if it's the 18th century. It is like someone went back in time and gave them all tractors, and coke (both types) but otherwise they're just carrying on as per.
Because it's like stacking the jury with your friends.
The only people who can really change it are in the same
cultparty as the ones doing the bad things. It's not going to go anywhereThe moment a government agent chooses to violate someone's rights, they should be assumed to have resigned their position effective instantaneously.
Their actions from that point on are those of a private individual. Their previous status as a servant of the public is no matter; they abandoned that status the moment they forswore their oath of office.
A private individual commanded a dog to attack a harmless member of the public; and the dog obeyed that command and attacked that person.
The private individual is to be charged with a felony, and the dog is to be put down as a danger to humankind.
You had me right up until putting the dog down. I get what you're going for, but the dog was doing exactly what it was trained to do. That in of itself may be a problem, but putting the dog down only serves to add a level of moral and emotional ambiguity in most people's minds. In reality 100% of the blame, culpability, and punishment should land squarely on the officer.
You're right.
To the point the person you're responding to is trying to get at though -- the whole idea of a "police dog" is fucking insane in the first place.
The things police dogs are used for are things police shouldn't be doing, or are complete bullshit. "drug sniffing" is nonsense. Chasing down and attacking people is cruel on any level, either to the person being attacked, or it's cruelty in sending a dog to attack someone armed with various weapons. Either way, the dog shouldn't be part of the situation in the first place.
I'm not sure I completely agree that dogs have no place in law enforcement. I can give a few examples:
Cadaver dogs and tracking hounds are an important part of criminal investigations at times.
Bomb sniffing dogs are definitely an important line of defense.
I think there is also an argument to be made that dogs are extremely useful in specific kinds of tactical situations which I would agree should be restricted to highly specialized and well trained police units.
Where we agree is that the prevelance of K9 units that are used to give false positives that lead to drug arrests, or the gratuitous use of K9 units in normal arrests is not acceptable or warranted. It is also shown to be abused time and time again. But again, I think there is more nuance to the issue which is difficult to account for during the justifiably negative emotional response people are having to this case, and the discussion needs to be had.
In general, an animal with a record of mutilating innocent people mustn't be kept in civilization. Something has to be done with the dog. Send it to a nice farm upstate?
There are all kinds of people with various dog training/skills in this world who take in dogs with problems from not being safe around small animals, or other dogs, or kids, or men, or women, etc.
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find people qualified and willing to take on this kind of dog "problem" (the dog did what it was trained to do, I'm not sure why that would be a problem necessarily. If it attacks someone outside of it's training then I'd be with you).
Hell throw in special training and some kind of state/local tax break for anyone willing and able to sign up for retired police dog owning.
Great. Dog lives.
The original trainer loses their job, though, because we don't need dogs trained to mutilate people.
Yes, the person should be charged with a crime for what he did, but the dog was just following its training as a police dog. They're supposed to do what the handler tells them to do. It's not the dogs fault; it did exactly what it was supposed to do had the situation called for the dog to attack.
Then I suppose the trainer is an accomplice in the crime.
What would you do with the dog then? Send it to a farm? It's trained to attack humans. We don't let a dog like that live in the city.
Police dogs retire all the time. Assuming this highly trained animal goes to a cartaker who doesn't know or issue the commands, that dog is harmless as any other, arguably more so
It sounds like you just have a problem with concept of police dogs in general. That's fine, but it's a separate discussion.
It's trained to attack on command. Remove the person giving commands and the dog no longer attacks.
The dog is not inherently dangerous because it was trained to attack.
The fuck? I was good with everything until the end.
The dog is not a danger to anyone unless the attack command is given. That's the whole point of training them.
Now arrest them.
I like how this is considered politics and not crime.
A few days ago when this popped up, I saw a bunch of comments saying how everyone bets he gets a paid suspension at worst. I'm aware that officers are practically immune from the terrible things they do on the clock. I am at least glad all the commenters that thought no justice at all would happen were wrong.
The union is already fighting it.
That is the union’s job. Just like defense attorneys fight against guilty verdicts for even blatant murderers, the union is representing a union member.
Annnnd that's why cops shouldn't have unions.
The police dept is already loathe to hold officers accountable, we don't need a whole ass union protecting cops from people who already don't want to hurt them.
So you’ve never been in a union that fights for workers to get better pay, reasonable hours, and decent healthcare? I’ve had unions at two jobs and they fought hard to make sure workers were treated fairly. Football players have a union. Many service workers have a union. Unions are not a bad thing.
Unions are not a bad thing, rightwing unions however betray all other unions and undermine the entire system.
I love unions, unions are great, more people should be in them. Just not cops. If all they were doing was fighting for better hours and pay I'd have no problem (acab aside), but police unions go to bat for violent cops who hurt people. Police unions fight to keep those violent cops in those positions of authority, paid by our tax dollars, with a gun, on the streets where their next potential victim waits.
That's a problem for me.
A union doesn't always fight for a union members job. The union will have a contract and if the union member violates the contract or puts the union in a bad light or weakens it's position to fight for it's members as a whole it can absolutely not support them.
A union should be prouder than this. They should want to have better member and other union members shouldnt want to be in an organization with someone who gives them a bad name.
The real question is does he lose his pension?
The tax payers demand to know.
Generally you do lose pension when fired from a police department.
The whole thing is fucking deplorable
Not good enough, not even close.
Firing is not enough. These officers can still get employed by other police departments.
The use of police dogs should be outlawed
There is nothing wrong with police dogs. Officers assigned to handle the dogs can be problematic though, if they don’t have the discipline to put their prejudices aside.
My friend has a dog... good dog, very quiet and likes to play fetch with his toy. Growls and barks exclusively at black people. His owner is not racist. We think it is because a black guy accidentally stepped on his paw (resulting in no permanent harm) about 12 years ago.
Just saying, dogs can be racist as well.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/02/can-dogs-be-racist.html
There are plenty of things wrong with police dogs.
We shouldn’t be comfortable with dogs mauling suspects. No one would be okay with a police officer stopping a suspect by slicing their leg with a machete.
Being able to consistently and adequately issue a command to a police dog is a myth.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/10/15/mauled-when-police-dogs-are-weapons
I think the dogs leave too much room for fake ass probable cause. They should only be used for maybe bomb scare or smth. Having them deal with everyday citizens? In the current system police are just trying to make money off charges for their bosses. Get rid of the dogs for now. Maybe in the future we can have nice things.
But because we have an intentionally broken system, that officer will wait a couple months, move two counties to the left and be rehired on another force (and likely promoted).
From cannon? No? Maybe some criminal charges then at least? No?
That's rare.
Not really... cops get fired all the time and then hired again at different places with no issues.
But did they fire the dog?
interesting bit of law regarding police dogs in Ohio --> https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2921.321