Why Focus on Puppycide?

Mark of New Jersey

Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.

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11 Responses

  1. Jason Kuznicki says:

    In fairness to Radley Balko, his puppycide posts are only a part of a much larger project that also includes many police abuses perpetrated on humans — wrong-house drug raids, overuse of tasers and taser accidents, lenient treatment of police before the law even when they’re off duty, and so forth.Report

    • @Jason Kuznicki, Yeah, I wasn’t trying to imply anything particular about Balko, just trying to explain why puppycide stories have a tendency to be particularly capable of inducing outrage. IIRC, Balko awhile back even noted that his puppycide posts have a tendency to draw more traffic than any other posts.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Mark Thompson says:

        @Mark Thompson, yeah, but I think you’re right.

        If a little girl gets shot in a wrong apartment raid, people (god help them) can say that this is the fault of the people in the correct apartment, or the parents of the little girl didn’t do enough to help the police in the first few seconds, or maybe the little girl had a squirt gun! It’s not an easy job and it’s not a nice part of town. (Hey, they should move if they have kids.)

        When the cops shoot a dog, they can’t pretend that the cops didn’t shoot a dog.Report

  2. Note, though, that in a police puppicide, there are only two kinds of dogs that are ever involved: “Rottweilers,” which are dogs shot by a police officer with black fur, and “Pit bulls,” which are defined as non-black dogs that are shot by police officers. No other kinds of dogs exist in the known universe described in police reports; were you to listen to cops, mythical animals such as “golden retrievers,” “chihuauas,” or “beagles” are like “dragons” and “unicorns” in that while they are much-beloved by children in fairy tales and animated Disney movies, they do not actually exist in the gritty world of gravely endangered police officers defending themselves from bloodthirsty pit bulls and vicious rottweilers.Report

  3. Eric Seymour says:

    Very insightful post.

    I believe that shooting aggressive dogs is rational as standard procedure during a police raid. On the whole, it seems likely to prevent a fair number of human casualties (police and non-police) which might result from a more chaotic situation where dogs are attacking officers. But I also think this is another reason to avoid the use of confrontational raids in the first place.

    Then again, I am not a dog lover, and I do not consider all dogs to be “poor, defenseless animals” by default. Truth be told, I’m very wary of any dog bigger than a housecat.Report