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After a Fort Worth officer shot and killed a family dog, the police department is taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

Contrast that to the U.S. Postal Service, another government organization whose employees regularly come into contact with pets. A Postal Service spokesman said in a 2009 interview that serious dog attacks on mail carriers are extremely rare. That's likely because postal workers are annually shown a two-hour video and given further training on "how to distract dogs with toys, subdue them with voice commands, or, at worst, incapacitate them with Mace."

The Annoyed Man wrote:

steveincowtown wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:
This could all be avoided with some variation on a very simple procedure: when the officer is arriving, or about to arrive on scene, he radios the dispatcher, asking dispatch to phone the home to notify the resident that he is out front, and to ask the resident (who after all is the one who called the cops) to please go to their front window and verify that they see the officer. When they confirm to dispatch that they see the officer, the dispatcher instructs the homeowner to get any dogs he owns under control. Only then does the officer exit his vehicle and approach the house. The right of the homeowner to be safe and secure in his person and property is then observed, as is the right of the officer in question to have a safer work environment.

I agree TAM, but step one is that the officer has to show up at the correct address.

This is why the officer "confirms" whether or not he is at the right address by having dispatch phone the homeowner at the correct address. If the homeowner goes to the front window and reports to dispatch there there is no police officer out front, then dispatch can tell the officer to double check his location.

Here's another procedure that would work: have the officer call up the correct address on Google Maps from within his squad car and then zoom in on the address in question. Google maps, particularly the "street view," will tell the officer if he's at the right address. Sure it adds time to the equation, but isn't the extra couple of minutes more than offset by not killing the dog at the wrong home?

The point is that this is a VERY simple problem to solve. Step one: Police ADMIT there is a problem. Set two: implement a simple procedure to avoid it going forward. If a police department is not willing to make that effort, then maybe their municipality ought to cut back their funding until they get the message. After all, who works for whom?

The Annoyed Man wrote:
This could all be avoided with some variation on a very simple procedure: when the officer is arriving, or about to arrive on scene, he radios the dispatcher, asking dispatch to phone the home to notify the resident that he is out front, and to ask the resident (who after all is the one who called the cops) to please go to their front window and verify that they see the officer. When they confirm to dispatch that they see the officer, the dispatcher instructs the homeowner to get any dogs he owns under control. Only then does the officer exit his vehicle and approach the house. The right of the homeowner to be safe and secure in his person and property is then observed, as is the right of the officer in question to have a safer work environment.