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stavros
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 190
Location: Michigan (USA)
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 Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 1:52 am Post subject: All dogs go to heaven. |
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It's a sad day indeed when I have more love for my dog than my fellow human being. (Not that sad).
Peace to all.
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April 7, 2006
The Drug War Goes to the Dogs
by Radley Balko Cato Institute
Radley Balko is a policy analyst specializing in "nanny state" issues and author of the forthcoming study "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Drug Raids in America."
In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I’ve found some pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby’s head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It’s happened with all five.)
Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked up are the ones where the SWAT officers shoot and kill the family dog.
I have two dogs, which may have something to do with it. But I’m not alone. A colleague tells me that when he and other libertarian commentators speak about the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco many people tend to doubt the idea that the government was out of line when it invaded, demolished, and set fire to a home of peaceful and mostly innocent people. But when the speaker mentions that the government also slaughtered two dogs during the siege, eyes light up, the indifferent get angry, and skeptics come around. Puppycide, apparently, goes too far.
One of the most appalling cases occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona, the home of Joe Arpaio, self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America.” In 2004 one of Arpaio’s SWAT teams conducted a bumbling raid in a Phoenix suburb. Among other weapons, it used tear gas and an armored personnel carrier that later rolled down the street and smashed into a car. The operation ended with the targeted home in flames and exactly one suspect in custody—for outstanding traffic violations.
But for all that, the image that sticks in your head, as described by John Dougherty in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, is that of a puppy trying to escape the fire and a SWAT officer chasing him back into the burning building with puffs from a fire extinguisher. The dog burned to death.
In a massive 1998 raid at a San Francisco housing co-op, cops shot a family dog in front of its family, then dragged it outside and shot it again.
When police in Fremont, California, raided the home of medical marijuana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine times. Filgo himself was never charged.
Last October police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of marijuana possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the kill in front of the family. They seized eight grams of marijuana, equal in weight to a ketchup packet.
In January a cop en route to a drug raid in Tampa, Florida, took a short cut across a neighboring lawn and shot the neighbor’s two pooches on his way. And last May, an officer in Syracuse, New York, squeezed off several shots at a family dog during a drug raid, one of which ricocheted and struck a 13-year-old boy in the leg. The boy was handcuffed at gunpoint at the time.
There was a dog in the ragweed bust I mentioned, too. He got lucky: He was only kicked across the room.
I guess the P.R. lesson here for drug war opponents and civil libertarians is to emphasize the plight of the pooch. America’s law-and-order populace may not be ready to condemn the practice of busting up recreational pot smokers with ostentatiously armed paramilitary police squads, even when the SWAT team periodically breaks into the wrong house or accidentally shoots a kid. I mean, somebody was probably breaking the law, right?
But the dog? That loyal, slobbery, lovable, wide-eyed, fur-lined bag of unconditional love?
Dammit, he deserves better.
This article appeared in Reason.com on April 5, 2006. |
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IntrepidEZJ
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 381
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| Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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Man's damn "Moral Sense".
He thinks it to be great, but the angels and the animals surely laugh at us.
We never know a good thing when we see it.
Can an angel or an animal truly do wrong?
Think on that one.
I recommend, highly, Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger".
If you want a paradigm shift, take a dive.....
You can find it on the net. |
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Rev.DonEstebonGoneCMA
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 29
Location: CasCaDIaN TOmB
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| Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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my children...
my greatest fear in this struggle is for the safety of these Sacrament Gaurdians...I pray to GOD daily for their protection.
Luckily most 'overseers'(officers) have dogs (usually staffordshires) that I come across and are too sentimental for those types of atrocities(knock on wood)
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*H-LAW*HEALTH/LOVE/AWARENESS/WEALTH |
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Stokes
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 28 Nov 2004
Posts: 1426
Location: PA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 5:16 am Post subject: |
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Nice dogs, Bro.
I breed Dober-Rots myself and have trained them to warn me of impending epileptic seizures.
They are my family ... loving, docile, and worthy.
God help the man or woman who dare slaughter them before my eyes!
Stokes
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Where love is, there God is also.
-Mahatma Gandhi |
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Socrates
Full member
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 92
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 5:25 am Post subject: |
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They're acting like they're the good guys. Stop busting people for marijuana and this won't happen, you are the cause of the problem........do they know that? 
_________________
"It's really amazing for me to see the ripples in the pond caused by casting a few pebbles" -Aeroplane
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Bamaman
regular contributor
Joined: 07 May 2006
Posts: 40
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| Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 6:18 am Post subject: |
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Not really a drug raid...but still on subject.
A few yrs back a family(couple with a young son and dog) was coming back from vacation in their station wagon. They stopped off the interstate in Tennessee at a gas station. The father accidently left his wallet on top of the car and got back on the interstate. He had several hundred dollars in cash in his wallet.
The money began to fly from the wallet and another driver on the interstate saw money flying from the passing station wagon. They called the police on their cell phone and reported that a green station wagon had sped past them doing approx. 90 mph with money flying from the vehicle and thought it may be running from a robbery.
The police intercepted the vehicle, forced the family out on the side of the interstate, made them get on their knees, and held shotguns to the back of their heads. The officers left the back door to their car open and the father pleaded with them to shut the door so their dog didn't get out and onto the interstate. They ignored him.
The dog, sure enough, jumped out and ran down into the ditch and then came back up with it's tail wagging to where it's masters were being assaulted. One officer turned and fired into the dog with his shotgun killing him.
There had been no report of any robbery made by anyone. There was know indication that these people had done anything wrong whatsoever. Yet, based on the cell phone callers assumption that they must be robbers...they felt justified in their actions.
The incident was recorded on one of those dash mounted video cams in the police cruiser.
google - "Tennessee dog shooting video".... if you are interested. |
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