Man Confronts Officers After They Shoot His Dog In His Back Yard

[Bengal Maniac]

This has certainly been a good read and I can certainly understand all points. This still gets down to me is searching for a kid more important than a constitutional right and to me it is simple, yes it is more important to find the kid/person.

 

Even though the officer didn't know if the child was in there, he certainly didn't know if he wasn't. I have no problem with him scaling the fence to ensure he wasn't. Then the second part of the issue is should he have shot the dog? Unfortunately, yes, if it is proven he felt threatened.

 

I certainly do not want pets shot and police arbitrarily searching my property, however, nothing should stand in the way of doing all that is necessary to find the child/person.

 

It certainly makes second guessing easy when you know the child was in his own house, but no one knew that during the search. I am not an expert on searches, but it seems reasonable to me that time is of the utmost importance in finding someone.

 

I like almost everyone feel awful for the pet owner, but I do also for the officer in just doing what he thought was in the best interest of finding the kid. If that was what he was doing and i have to believe that is what he was doing.

 

My guess is if someone abducted a person having a 6 foot fence as a barrier would be perfect protection from someone observing what or who I had in my back yard. That does not mean that everyone that has a fence like this is hiding something or someone. In fact, I realize the vast majority don't.

 

I expect our police force leave no stone unturned when looking for missing people. You can draw up any scenario you want, but to me it seems they were searching for a kid and doing it diligently. Extremely unfortunate of what happened as a result.

[JokersWild24]

I'm not the best at interpreting laws or SC rulings. Can the SC offer a different ruling now depending on circumstances?

 

If a missing child doesn't give an officer the right to check a fenced yard the law should be changed. If he broke the law here he should be punished. Like I said though I would hope an officer was willing to look in a gated yard for my child if he was missing.

 

To the bolded, you'd better believe it. Definitely something where one or two factors that are different can end up giving you a different outcome and that's how attorneys make their living IMO.

[JokersWild24]

What I want to know is did Officer Olsen yell "No!" loudly when the dog approached him? Most dogs that have been socialized to humans understand "No" and will back off. I've done that a time or two in my life and it has worked on non-aggressive breeds like Weimaraners. Or did Olsen just over-react given the Weimaraner's size? I also want to know if the smirking female animal control officer in the video assisted the dog's owner with proper removal of the animal from the property. I'm confused as to what her actual duties were at the scene.

 

 

If a guy who has stopped a mass murder by wounding someone in the act of a random shooting spree feels compelled to kill a dog for his own safety, I'm going to be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt at least once if he says he felt threatened by the dog. Having been through what Mr. Olsen has lived through, I'm inclined to believe that he really knows the meaning of 'threatened' and that it isn't something he throws around loosely.

 

 

No offense, because this doesn't specifically speak to you or just you in general, but just because Weimerainers typically aren't aggressive doesn't mean that this one wasn't. I've raised pit bulls who were huge babies and that I'd only heard bark less than 10 times in their lives (but when they did bark, it sounded scary). Same time, I've seen aggressive dogs that were much smaller.

 

 

I'm the guy railing on the ASU Campus PD because I think there's a much better way he could have reasoned with the citizen, but I don't see lots of reasoning between an officer a dog. Again, here's a guy who has basically looked down the barrel of a gun while someone was on a shooting rampage, all while it can be safely assumed the shooter knew he was going to need to take him out if he wanted to keep going, so pardon me if I'm inclined to believe him when he says he felt threatened by the dog.

 

If this were a guy who seems like he shares more personality traits with the ASU Campus PD officer than the one I've read about (just based on what I've read and inferred about each), then I'd probably feel differently, but this is a man whose killed in the line of duty to protect innocent lives, so sorry if I want to give him a bit of a pass for killing a pet while searching for a child (even though there might have been a better way here too) when he is probably beating himself up over it anyway.

[AverageJoesGym]

If a guy who has stopped a mass murder by wounding someone in the act of a random shooting spree feels compelled to kill a dog for his own safety, I'm going to be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt at least once if he says he felt threatened by the dog. Having been through what Mr. Olsen has lived through, I'm inclined to believe that he really knows the meaning of 'threatened' and that it isn't something he throws around loosely.

 

 

No offense, because this doesn't specifically speak to you or just you in general, but just because Weimerainers typically aren't aggressive doesn't mean that this one wasn't. I've raised pit bulls who were huge babies and that I'd only heard bark less than 10 times in their lives (but when they did bark, it sounded scary). Same time, I've seen aggressive dogs that were much smaller.

 

 

I'm the guy railing on the ASU Campus PD because I think there's a much better way he could have reasoned with the citizen, but I don't see lots of reasoning between an officer a dog. Again, here's a guy who has basically looked down the barrel of a gun while someone was on a shooting rampage, all while it can be safely assumed the shooter knew he was going to need to take him out if he wanted to keep going, so pardon me if I'm inclined to believe him when he says he felt threatened by the dog.

 

If this were a guy who seems like he shares more personality traits with the ASU Campus PD officer than the one I've read about (just based on what I've read and inferred about each), then I'd probably feel differently, but this is a man whose killed in the line of duty to protect innocent lives, so sorry if I want to give him a bit of a pass for killing a pet while searching for a child (even though there might have been a better way here too) when he is probably beating himself up over it anyway.

 

My biggest problem with the whole thing is I don't think he belonged in the yard. It just wasn't reasonable to think that a 3 year old could have been there. At worst, he could have looked before he leaped. The whole police department comes across poorly here. They didn't find the child in the house which resulted in the search and it has now been released that the child was found 30 minutes before Geist was shot by the officer--very poor communication to have him still out there banging on doors and jumping fences.

[4chs]

My biggest problem with the whole thing is I don't think he belonged in the yard. It just wasn't reasonable to think that a 3 year old could have been there. At worst, he could have looked before he leaped. The whole police department comes across poorly here. They didn't find the child in the house which resulted in the search and it has now been released that the child was found 30 minutes before Geist was shot by the officer--very poor communication to have him still out there banging on doors and jumping fences.

 

If this is true, then whoever was in charge of the search should be held accountable.

[UKMustangFan]

If this is true, then whoever was in charge of the search should be held accountable.

 

Agreed. 5-10 minutes, I can see. Half hour? Shouldn't be that difficult to communicate that the child was found.

[AverageJoesGym]

Post some findings. Then let's see a break down of how many of those were justified and how many times the police shot dogs with no reason while owners were out walking them or having a BBQ in their yard. I'd say it's still pretty rare.

 

Here's a map with 2014's disputed shootings. I'm sure that this isn't all of the disputed shootings. The list includes 30 dogs and 1 cat for 2014. You can click on the pins for the details on each incident.

 

Puppycide - Slightly Angry Old Man

[AverageJoesGym]

It seems like there is a new shooting every other day. Here's one where the officer shot a black lab through the half open window of the owner's van. The officer was investigating the owner's van as a van used in a child luring case. He approached the van with his weapon drawn, claimed that the dog was a vicious pit bull that lunged out of the window and attempted to bite him in the face. He defended himself by shooting the "pit bull" once in the chest through the window. It turned out that the van was not the one used in the child luring case and the pit bull was in fact, a black lab. There are links to several other dog shootings in the story.

 

» Police Shoot Black Lab Through Vehicle Window, Claim It Was ?Lunging? Pit Bull Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

[halfback20]

Here's a map with 2014's disputed shootings. I'm sure that this isn't all of the disputed shootings. The list includes 30 dogs and 1 cat for 2014. You can click on the pins for the details on each incident.

 

Puppycide - Slightly Angry Old Man

 

30 dogs being shot in a year is still very rare. Heck, it's only 5 more than POLICE OFFICERS that have been murdered this year. 25 police officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty, up almost 50%. You see a new one of those almost every day also it seems.

 

I'd like to see the total number of pets killed by non police. I wonder how the numbers compare.

[AverageJoesGym]

30 dogs being shot in a year is still very rare. Heck, it's only 5 more than POLICE OFFICERS that have been murdered this year. 25 police officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty, up almost 50%. You see a new one of those almost every day also it seems.

 

I'd like to see the total number of pets killed by non police. I wonder how the numbers compare.

 

Keep in mind that the map only shows shootings that the map maker considers disputed. These Spyker be the ones like Geist. Ones where the dogs were loose, there were no witnesses or maybe the dogs had already attacked someone are not include d.

 

Of course the map that would show the number of police officers killed by dogs would be blank--not just this year but going back at least 50 years. While trying to dig up some solid numbers I came across several articles where officers resigned, we're fired or even prosecuted after wrongfully spring dogs. In almost every instance the police spokesperson said that training had to improve to prevent situations like these from happening. It sounds like that is the biggest problem--the officers do not know how to deal with an aggressive dog except to shoot it. I'm sure that most of them regret it when they have to do that. It seems like we are doing them a disservice by not training them better.

[Jumper_Dad]

My biggest problem with the whole thing is I don't think he belonged in the yard. It just wasn't reasonable to think that a 3 year old could have been there. At worst, he could have looked before he leaped. The whole police department comes across poorly here. They didn't find the child in the house which resulted in the search and it has now been released that the child was found 30 minutes before Geist was shot by the officer--very poor communication to have him still out there banging on doors and jumping fences.

Could the child have also possibly been abducted...no one brings that up. If child had been outside and abducted he absolutely could have been in a neighboring backyard while the abductor was hiding.

 

I still hate that the dog was killed, but we were not there and still don't know 100% of the circumstances. As much as we may think we do. I did a few hundred internal and external investigations in my time and you'd be surprised how many times the evidence looks 100% one way initially and when the evidence was completely reviewed there was some small detail that turned the entire case 180 degrees from perception.

[doomer]

There is a lot more to this event, which I won't go into right now, but:

 

Thanks to the State Trooper Seargeant on his way to work this AM who helped me save a senior Bassett Hound that was in the middle of I-64 this morning. He didn't shoot the dog that was snarling at us....it got hit by an SUV who didn't even slow down, but rather helped me secure it, and he took it in his car to my vet.

 

Additionally, just a rant, people would not even slow down when they saw a car with flashers on and clearly something going on until they saw the cruiser's flashers. They must have been too busy texting. :taz:

[doomer]

There is a lot more to this event, which I won't go into right now, but:

 

Thanks to the State Trooper Seargeant on his way to work this AM who helped me save a senior Bassett Hound that was in the middle of I-64 this morning. He didn't shoot the dog that was snarling at us....it got hit by an SUV who didn't even slow down, but rather helped me secure it, and he took it in his car to my vet.

 

Additionally, just a rant, people would not even slow down when they saw a car with flashers on and clearly something going on until they saw the cruiser's flashers. They must have been too busy texting. :taz:

 

Not sure anyone is interested, but the dog I pulled off of I-64 this AM is apparently a famous character in Midway, KY. His name is Otis Rouse III. (And I was thinking I was going to have to pick him up at my vet and explain to my wife why we have another dog.) His owner picked him up, and he is OK even after being run-over by a SUV. One of his youtube videos is below.