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flintknapper wrote:

srothstein wrote:

flintknapper wrote:There simply does not exist enough evidence (or witnesses) in this event to point one way or the other. It is very much He said, She said. The officer will not offer any more testimony in this case, that is certain....so we are never going to be able to scrutinize it further.

Well, I would think that if you are correct about it being a he said/she said type case (I don't agree but will so stipulate for the time being), then the police did the exactly correct thing by closing the case.

After all, we operate on the principle of innocent until proven guilty. If there is not enough evidence to prove the officer did something wrong, he was innocent. Right?

Absolutely right! Now....I hope you will not take exception to what I am about to ask next.

Absolutely no offense. How can i be offended by a friendly discussion?

How hard was that evidence looked for? The officer was interviewed by another policeman. I am trying to find out now if the University and the City looked into as they said they would.

That may be a good question. I don't know how hard they looked. This is why I said "if" it is a he said she said situation. If there is evidence, it should be collected and the case examined properly. But I took your argument as we should be saying the cop was wrong when you said it was an unprovable case. That is my sole point.

Without the evidence, we are all responding based on opinions and emotions. My initial emotion was the cop did exactly what I would have done. This is why I posted once and then stayed out of it until my response to you. If it is unprovable, the cop is innocent and we should stop arguing and move on to things we need to discuss.

But really, you are not asking me to believe that fraternal support and the thin blue line do not exist, right?

No, unfortunately there is a brotherhood out there and it does sometimes interfere in cases. I do not know if it did or not in this case. I would love to see this brotherhood act more professionally in all cases, but I do not know how to make that happen.

My problem with this whole thing is that the seriousness of it all doesn't seem to register with some folks. A firearm was discharged in a populated, public place. Deadly force was used. This is serious. A large amount of discount has been applied by some folks here because the target was a dog. I don't even care about that, I care that the matter is looked into... and looked into hard , to make certain it was proper and necessary.

I have to admit that I do not take it as seriously as some people have. One of the reasons is that it was a dog. I, as many cops do, tend to get very pragmatic about things and place much higher value on what really did happen than what could have. I will support that this probably could be looked into further, and should have been when it happened.

I do not know what evidence there might have been to collect that was missed. I don't know how to prove the dog was aggressive or not. The kids and the officer seemed to think it was. The owner seemed to think it was not. There were no other witnesses that have been reported in the papers yet to say which way it was. I will point out that in many areas of Texas law, the victim gets to define the crime. This is especially true of assault (if you think it hurt it is class A, if you say there was no pain, it is class C) and of threats. There is a little bit about reasonable in there in defining the threat, but that is not a very clear guideline either. Given all of this, the only thing left to investigate is if the officer was obeying the department's procedures. From what has been reported, he was.

flintknapper wrote:There simply does not exist enough evidence (or witnesses) in this event to point one way or the other. It is very much He said, She said. The officer will not offer any more testimony in this case, that is certain....so we are never going to be able to scrutinize it further.

Well, I would think that if you are correct about it being a he said/she said type case (I don't agree but will so stipulate for the time being), then the police did the exactly correct thing by closing the case.

After all, we operate on the principle of innocent until proven guilty. If there is not enough evidence to prove the officer did something wrong, he was innocent. Right?

Wow, I missed one day in the forum and end up catching up on four pages of posts for one thread. I am really surprised at some of the attitudes also.

I think the officer did the right thing in shooting, and that I would say that if it was a CHL, a person unlawfully carrying, or an LEO. He saw a dog approaching his kids and felt threatened. He stopped the perceived attack with no people being injured.

The elements to be considered on this are if the officer could reasonably feel threatened. In this, I have to say yes. Some of you mention the breed of dog as a contributing factor. It may or may not have been. I have always said that any dog can and will bite. If it has teeth it will bite. I don't care if it is a shephard, doberman, pit bull, poodle, beagle, or chihuahua, if it has teeth it will bite. My 21 year old daughter is still carrying scars from when her own dog bit her. I know lots of officers who have been bitten by their own dogs. I had to get rid of an Alaskan Malemute once when it bit a neighbor child (who had fed it and played with it in hte past) and malemutes have friendliness written right into the sandards by which the breed is judged.

Second, was the threat. The dog was off leash and approached the children. The only people who get to make a determination of threat is the children and the shooter. If the children are afraid of dogs (my youngest son is), then their reaction will also contribute to make the dog seem to be attacking. Their fear may even cause the dog to attack when it would not otherwise have done so. There are a lot of character witnesses for the dogs, but not one who saw the confrontation. The best is one who says she saw it and the dog was not that close, but the physical evidence (blood stains) show otherwise. The owner says the dog had turned towards her but, again, the physical evidence says otherwise (shot in the front of the head). This all makes it seem to me like the officer is probably the closest to relaying facts and is definitely telling the truth as he saw it.

Third was the weapon choice. The officer did not have OC spray on him. I find this to be normal and the idea that the officer should have had more to be abnormal. The officer was off duty. He wears a big heavy duty belt to carry things like his radio, handcuffs, OC spray, and pistol when on duty and I know of no officer that wears such a belt off duty. And since his gear is not coming off that belt very easily, it is normal for the officer to only carry his weapon when off duty. I know some of you carry OC also, but I would be willing to bet (if it could be verified) that it is a very small percentage of the CHL's in this state who also carry OC.

I think the officer did things as well as he could in this case.

Now, I am concerned about comments from the paper designed to instill fear. The paper should report the facts and not editorialize. I am also concerned about the Cheif's attitude toward guns and this use. Evertime I hear someone blame it on the legislature and say he just enforces the laws not makes them, I shudder. This is a bad attitude for the cops to have and only causes problems. It is basically saying he is a robot and just does whatever the law says. It may be time to fire or retire him and get cops in there that can think for themselves. They need to be able to explain to people what the law is and how to change it. They also need to explain to the people why they took the action they did (or did not. Officer discretion is alive and well in 99.99% of the cases in Texas.