Because I am a masochist.

Today, someone posted the video from MO’s finest that was circulating in the blogoworld last week.  Here are some amazing comments from the peanut gallery to which I subscribe. What you are about to read might be profoundly disturbing so if you’ve just had a Taco Bell bean burrito, don’t say you weren’t warned.

I am sure there are crazy people who looked at the video and thought it was perfectly fine, but I don’t know who those people are and usually they are smart enough to keep their thoughts to themselves.  But oh no, this crowd does not know when to shut up.  They think their smarty pants views need to be broadcast to the world – try this one:  (this guy’s website says he does Wills, Probate, and, of course, Criminal Defense, because any jackass can do that)

OK, hold on a second. I saw the video and I really did not see anything that

I thought was a shock to the conscience. You don’t get a search warrant that

easily. There has to be something that justifies it. That being said, the

officers going in are usually not privy to the basis of the warrant. They

have been told to go search this particular house. The reasonable assumption

on their part is that there is a criminal at this house and that they have

to assume that they will be greeted with violence. Therefore the father

being cuffed on the ground is not unusual, nor should it be.The children

were not treated badly. The dog…we never get to see whats going on with

that particular dog, but let me ask this rhetorical question; does a dog

have to sink its teeth into an officer before he’s justified in shooting the

dog? I think not.

Its easy to second guess what these officers did, try being in a search

that goes bad and lets see how you react from that point on as an officer

This post brought on a lot of chatter and anger and even I had to use ALL CAPS in a respose to this nugget:

There appears to be considerable mis-information out there. The children were not present when the dogs were shot. The dog that was killed was a pit bull – an aggressive breed
The dogs were NOT in a cage. The police had a valid warrant. They knocked and announced themselves. The door was unlocked – it was not broken in.
When searching for a CDS, you do not wait while the CDS could be flushed away. You knock, announce and go in. Do a google search for
Columbia police kinloch and peruse what comes up – including
http://www.gocolumbiamo.com/Police/KinlochCourtSearchWarrantUpdate.php

If you click on the link you get to the City of Columbia’s website and it has got a little blurb about the ‘misinformation out there’.  What that listserv member neglects to mention, though, is this section of the news release which is in response to reports that the warrant on this dangerous and deranged criminal was not served for three days:

“Upon being briefed about the incident Chief Burton concluded that

this search warrant should not have been served in the delayed fashion
that it was, but rather should have been disregarded when the
department was not able to serve it within a reasonable time. He has
made members of his department aware that policy changes with regard
to search warrant service are underway. In the interim, he will
personally be responsible for approving search warrants in which
forced entry may be required.”

Seven shots were fired in that house.  Seven.  I am going to offend the dog lovers out there, but it’s not the killing of the dog that disturbs me, it’s the utter lack of humanity shown by those officers to everyone involved.  And the warrant should not have even been served.  It should have been disregarded.  A dead dog, a traumatized kid, a misdemeanor conviction.  Well, that’s something, right?

As if the fun ends there.  It was followed by this, from the self-proclaimed defense attorney:

Hey, maybe dad shouldn’t be selling pot out of the house if he doesn’t want
his kids exposed to cops bursting into the house. The real blame here is on
poppy not the cops. Dad brouhgt this on his family. Period

He had a backup, some woman who said something about how its so awful when people move into the neighborhood and start selling drugs.  Oh no! Oh me oh my!  Marijuana in my neighborhood! 

Just as I was about to quit the listserv I got this: 

Mirriam – don’t let your head blow up and don’t leave the listserv. I agree completely with you and am a little too thin-skinned to say so. I got abused by conservative nut-cases in law school for three years and haven’t yet recovered. Stay in the fight.

That’s as good an argument to stay as any, right?