If you have the desire to find out what inmates of the asylum are saying when they think no one is listening, click into a twitter conversation among two other people and read.  For whatever reason, the back and forth is almost private even though it’s available to anyone who cares to look. In the information age, people forget that every voyeur can watch at will.  I did this the other day when  Radley Balko was explaining puppycide to someone.

The twitterer asked Radley why are cops murdering dogs.  Radley responded :

Because they can. No training, no consequences.

I did something I shouldn’t do, but it being twitter and all, I did it anyway. I interjected. My rudeness was duly ignored.  But my reason is that Radley is the foremost chronicler of puppycide I know, and though it may be a very small niche, it’s an interesting and important one in understanding the nature of how police interact with the world around them. 

If a newspaper has a question about puppycide, the reporter will call Radley. If there is a TV show on Animal Planet about puppycide, Radley’s face will grace the screen.  He’s the go-to guy on puppycide, so it mattered to me that when he explained why cops murder dogs, he got it right. His twit was two-thirds wrong. Granted, it was just a twit, but it was mostly wrong.

Cops do not shoot dogs because they hate dogs.  They don’t roam the town in search of dogs to shoot. They don’t take independent joy in killing the family pet.  It may seem that way, but it’s not the case.  So the answer isn’t “because they can,” being of a dog-killing sort and murdering them whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Cops kill dogs because of the First Rule of Policing, make it home for dinner.  If a dog is perceived as a potential threat to the officer’s safety, no matter how slight, the cop will shoot the dog dead.  It’s not that he wanted to kill another dog, but that there was no way, none, that he was going to suffer a scratch, no less a vicious bite. 

The cost of killing the dog was marginal compared with the cost of protecting himself from harm, no matter how slight.  Dogs are fungible. Cute, but as easily replaced as a pair of faithful blue jeans. While someone will cry over the killing, they will get over it, get a new dog, and fall in love all over again.  The officer, on the other hand, is irreplaceable.  There isn’t a cell on his body that he’s going to sacrifice for a dog if he doesn’t have to.  And he doesn’t have to.

Which brings to light the second error in the twit, no training.  To the contrary, this is precisely because of training. It is drilled into their head, in training and in their daily work that the most basic rule of policing is surviving the day unscathed.  This is chiseled into their heads, and is indeed a foundational maxim in the law.  This is why a cop can frisk someone whenever he feels any potential threat. There may be no express constitutional right for police officers to put their own safety above everything else, but it’s in there in decision after decision.

Radley’s third point, that there are no consequences, is a critical one. Consequences inhibit action. They cause a person to stop and think. If I do this, what will happen to me?  The corollary is if I don’t do this, what will happen to me? In a comment thread at  PoliceOne about the use of force, cops ripped chiefs and academics for asserting that resort to force ignores the training in tactics designed to avoid its use. 

Easier said then done. Always easy to write it on paper. At 0dark30 hours I’m dealing with an out of control subject no matter what the incident I’m not going to pull out the book of Chief rules to take action. I’m going to move to whatever I need to control and win the situation. If verbal judo is going to do it fine, if my glock 19 is the answer well so be it. We need to back our street officers when they have to use extreme measures and stop running from our responsibility to do our jobs. Will we have some that will cross the line, probably, but hpw about all the officers lives we may save by being proactive.

Or this:

I have been a use of force/defensive tactics instructor for over 7 years in a department exceeding 100 sworn personnel with a city of 100,000. After reading the comments in the above article I am grateful for the use of force support in our department from the Chief on down. We are not here to play around, get hurt, and sure as hell not get killed… Several basics I follow on the street that have not let me down: always back your play, don’t say it if you can’t do it. Rule of thumb, ask, tell, make, again lawfully. Finally when it is time for force, make it swift, make it strong and make it count. Ending a fight fast is better for all involved.

Or this:

So the chief prefers that we go hands-on and risk a personal serious injury or death? This doesnt make sense. Resisting an arrest, either actively or passively, is still resisting and I will be taking that individual into custody. If I’m not getting compliance with direct my verbal communications, then verbal orders, why not use force that keeps me just a little safer? The suspect is the one that brought this incident upon themselves.

Notice a theme permeating these comments? Aside from exaggerating their perceived risk of harm (though, as most cops would point out, you never know whether the upshot will be a scratch or death until afterward), there is no way a police officer is prepared to willingly risk harm to himself rather than do harm to another.

A  Houston police officer entered a group home for the mentally ill, and shot and killed a double amputee in a wheelchair. The reason is that the man had an “object” in his hand. It turned out to be a pen.  It could have been a knife.  Or it could have been the pen the pierced a police officer’s eyeball. The cop was not prepared to find out.

“He was approaching them aggressively,” said Houston Police Department spokes­woman Jodi Silva. “He was attempting to stab them with what is now found to be a pen.”

Maybe there was a chat in the secret confines of the Houston Police Department, cursing the officer for needlessly shooting a man with only one arm and one leg. No police chief wants to attract public scrutiny, especially when it appears obvious to members of the public that trained police officers should have been able to subdue this man without killing him.

But he was a crippled. He was mentally ill. He was a throwaway human being. No cop is going to let himself be killed, maimed, scratched by a man like this.  After all, everybody loves dogs, and yet they shoot puppies, don’t they?