Arlington, TX Cop tries to shoot dog, kills woman

[Hoji]

I am not certain but I thought TCOLE had a class for dealing with dogs. Doubt it is mandatory though. After so many mentally ill people were getting shot, TCOLE did come out with a mandatory class on dealing with the mentally ill. Of course they mandate a class on cultural diversity so you take it for what it is worth.



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I actually believe it is mandatory. I have taken it through CAPCOG and it was a well done class. Taught by a K9 trainer/officer.

Started the class off with” look, if the dog needs to be shot, then shoot it, but let’s look at as many circumstances as we can to prevent that option from happening”

Basically a 7 hour day of canine situational awareness.

 

[Renegade]

Getting back to this incident. The officer did not make a poor decision if indeed the dog was advancing to attack. He had poor marksmanship on a moving target (there is a difference).

It was a poor decision to fire as he KNEW the woman was in the path, coupled with inaccuracy from an inexperienced officer. One or two side steps and he could have taken the woman out of the path. Nothing more dangerous than a scared rookie officer with a gun. Pretty much a worst case scenario.

Rookie was obviously sleeping during the “get off the X” shooting lesson.

Maybe if she controlled her dog she would still be alive and a young officer would not have a ruined career.

Well the woman might have been unconscious, so special circumstances apply in this case.

But in general, like a Game Warden who says he has never pulled a drown man wearing a life vest from a lake, I am unaware of a dog that needed to be killed while on the owners leash.

 

[Mowingmaniac 24/7]

"Of course they mandate a class on cultural diversity"

So TCOLE is a liberal L.E. organization?

I know there are LEO's that're libs.

How do I know?

I disparaged obama to a LEO bud thinking him a Conservative, silly me. (we had lost touch for many years and were just reacquainted)

After which he never spoke to me again, though first telling me how much he admired that U.S. hating commie pseudo-President.

 

[Sublime]

It was a poor decision to fire as he KNEW the woman was in the path, coupled with inaccuracy from an inexperienced officer. One or two side steps and he could have taken the woman out of the path. Nothing more dangerous than a scared rookie officer with a gun. Pretty much a worst case scenario.

Rookie was obviously sleeping during the “get off the X” shooting lesson.

Granted my days at the academy were long ago but we didn't have tactic and shooting instructions. The instruction was can you qualify and manipulate you duty gun correctly.

Was he sleeping or did he lack experience and get info. Overload at the time of the shooting. It is super easy to say he should have sidestepped AFTER the fact but not as easy when facing an immediate assault - in this case the dog. Could you or I have done better? Maybe, maybe not. He is gonna answer for it. Rarely do we rise to our level of training but default to our lowest level of training.

See when fallible humans answer calls dealing with other fallible humans, bad juju sometimes happens. This was a case of that. His inexperience probably had something to do with it.


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[Renegade]

Overload at the time of the shooting. It is super easy to say he should have sidestepped AFTER the fact but not as easy when facing an immediate assault - in this case the dog.

Yep.

While the thousands of LE encounters with dogs each day are non-events, the ones we do hear about seem to always involve an irrational fear, the sudden loss of sound decision making, and an instant reaction to shoot out of panic. This sure looks like one of them.

I have seen folks handle encounters with Bears better than a small number of LE can handle a dog. I don't really get it. Even unarmed I have no fear of a dog causing me significant harm.

 

[motorcarman]

My guess is that the dept will want the dog euthanized. It did act aggressively and will be blamed for the death!!!!
If the woman was the owner, then the owner is dead so who will object?

bob

 

[dapakattack]

... where that dog was coming from because it’s plausible the dog was a pet of the unconscious person and was protecting them.

Or having her for lunch, as was the case from another forum thread: https://www.texasguntalk.com/threads/texas-man-eaten-by-dogs.92561/

 

[toddnjoyce]

It is harder on the average LEO than ever before but it isn't because police actions (generally) have eroded the trust. ....

... I have a sense of humor too but to imply the officer routinely looks to violate the civil liberties of others is spoken out of ignorance and bias. Again, we all have opinions and I am just expressing mine. Change my mind if you want to discuss further....

First, thank you for answering my question; it provided context to help me better understand your position. I've tried to stay out of this thread and not ready anything further than you response above so that I'm not biased. I've yet to watch the bodycam footage referenced earlier. I will make reference to the average person, who is generally a law abiding person. I realize and understand for LE their encounters skew away from the average person.

A little about me, then I'll share my position. Retired (2016) military, aviation background, then embedded with the Army as a liaison and controller for air-to-ground operations. I'm going to work from big to small next, in generalities.

One of the roles of government, of which both the military and law enforcement are agents of, is as a protector and provider to citizens. In this role, government (and it's agents) provide the safety of law and order to citizens and protects them from each other and foreign enemies. To do so, a government necessarily extends certain liberties and powers to it's agents and places special faith in those agents to do so. In return, citizens trust a government and it's agents with that extension of liberty and power; while there is no expectation of perfection, this is an expectation of transparency, which has evolved over time.

As you mention, the average citizen has little to no interaction with government, or it's agents, other than in an administrative manner or when it makes the news. My experience is that most Americans trust law enforcement despite negative encounters either in person or they are exposed to through the media simply because they understand the basic role LEOs are asked to fulfill. In short, I believe most people give the benefit of the doubt to the government in questionable circumstances. What changes that trust relationship is when reasonable questions are unanswered, or avoided by the government. The question becomes, why do I believe that?

I believe that because of my experience. The public trusts I won't put a bomb on the wrong target, because they trust I've been trained not to do so. If I put a bomb on the wrong target, the public trusts government will hold me accountable for that. By the same token, if I do put put a bomb on the wrong target, I expect to be able to defend to a reasonable person why that occurred, in the knowledge that some information may be gleaned post facto that I should have known during mission execution. And I also expect that my peers, who are also members of the public will learn something from my errors. This occurs in training and in combat. We diligently train and then debrief our events to identify and resolve root cause errors that lead to an execution error or successfully defend the actions the resulted in an error because yeah, tactical execution is messy. But, while we strive to conduct our operations in a manner that is above reproach, we are not above reproach.

Getting to specifics, what struck an emotional response in me was your statement in post 15, "It appears we like our policing nice and tidy without mistakes." That struck me as a response that the actions of government or it's agents is above reproach. While I realize that may not have been your intent, written language isn't the best medium for nuanced exchanges. However, there is plenty of historical and contemporary evidence that in yes, in fact, some governments and agents do intentionally and willfully, and not negligently and unknowningly violate civil rights. To me, that is why it is harder for LE in generaly to maintain trust with the average person today.

If I implied that in this specific instance in Arlington, the officer that was not my intent, instead it was underscore that yes, it does occur. When it does occur, the government or agent that does so must be held accountable.

In this particular instance, I believe my position was that a poor decision was made to engage a target, given the information known to me at the time. I don't know if the dog was truly a threat, which is why I used the term target above. For me, the decision to put a bomb on target when I reasonably know there are unlocated friendlies or non-combatants in the area is a risk mitigation decision. If I can't mitigate the collateral damage risk, then I can't legally, nor in good conscience engage my target. Given the information available at Friday afternoon, I believe it was reasonable to ask why this occurred.

I hope this provides greater context to my position.

 

[Sublime]

Getting to specifics, what struck an emotional response in me was your statement in post 15, "It appears we like our policing nice and tidy without mistakes." That struck me as a response that the actions of government or it's agents is above reproach. While I realize that may not have been your intent, written language isn't the best medium for nuanced exchanges. However, there is plenty of historical and contemporary evidence that in yes, in fact, some governments and agents do intentionally and willfully, and not negligently and unknowningly violate civil rights. To me, that is why it is harder for LE in generaly to maintain trust with the average person today.

If I implied that in this specific instance in Arlington, the officer that was not my intent, instead it was underscore that yes, it does occur. When it does occur, the government or agent that does so must be held accountable.

Do some LEOS and some Soldiers willfully violate others civil rights? Well yeah and so do other people like yesterday in El Paso BUT that wasn't the case here and I was replying to someone (not you) that used it as a dig to LE.

As for my comment about people liking their LE neat and tidy, it is a true comment. I think you read too much into it. It's like people loving sausage but they don't wanna know how it is made. It's the same, people want to be protected and safe (or at least have the illusion of it) but they do not want to know how that is accomplished. They just do not want it to effect them. Fallible human enforcing laws on other fallible humans sometimes gets messy.

As for govt. agents being held accountable - I can't speak for the military having never served but I can tell you for a fact that more LEOS are being held accountable (many times inaccurately) today than any time in history. THAT is one reason why you have so many openings all over the place. Why take a job with high risk, constant negativity, and a chance to be imprisoned for doing your job for 50K a year? That is why I say in general, the public gets the policing they clamor for. I would never do this job today. I got a pension waiting for me and I feel for these guys today.

 

[Renegade]

I can't speak for the military having never served but I can tell you for a fact that more LEOS are being held accountable (many times inaccurately) today than any time in history.

Agreed but more officers are committing crimes than any other time history too.

The simple fact is standards are way down, hiring is up, and lots of folks are getting le jobs that never would have made the cut 20 years ago.

And as you say the most qualified are avoiding the job, thus creating downward self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

 

[AustinN4]

So yeah, it’s expected LEOs are going to make a mistake, but on the continuum of NBD to BFD, this one is a BFD and is certainly worthy of criticism.

^^Winner!

 

[TxStetson]

Agreed but more officers are committing crimes than any other time history too.

The simple fact is standards are way down, hiring is up, and lots of folks are getting le jobs that never would have made the cut 20 years ago.

And as you say the most qualified are avoiding the job, thus creating downward self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

I agree with this, and would like to add that information is more readily available now than ever before. 1 person with a cell phone posts a video to facebook or tweets what happened, and the whole country knows about before the day is over.

 

[toddnjoyce]

I agree with this, and would like to add that information is more readily available now than ever before. 1 person with a cell phone posts a video to facebook or tweets what happened, and the whole country knows about before the day is over.

This is where LE agencies have to get inside the OODA loop.

 

[Sublime]

Agreed but more officers are committing crimes than any other time history too.

The simple fact is standards are way down, hiring is up, and lots of folks are getting le jobs that never would have made the cut 20 years ago.

And as you say the most qualified are avoiding the job, thus creating downward self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

As goes society, LE follows. They gotta hire from somewhere, hence the lower standards. LEOS are NOT the reason for the failure because most LEOs are decent folks. The self fulfilling prophecy occurs because of how the loudest civilians clamor for a kinder gentler LEO that don't "appear" to to be racist and require a limiting of force used. Anytime force is used it looks bad and many are now conditioned to hate or dislike LE. From our past president to the media to the schools to the communities that are crime ridden.

The cycle is similar to why so many hate conservatives or gun owners. Again, it is easy to hate on or second guess LE now since they are an easy target.

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[DoubleDuty]

Except in this case, this guy's SA sucked.

 

[F350-6]

I watched the video today for the first time. The cop did retreat first. Too bad he didn't do it an an angle away from the victim.

The dog was coming at full speed so I can see a reason for pulling the trigger. But that was either one heck of a ricochet, or at least one round was way, way high.

Too bad he didn't put the first shot in the ground in front of the dog, but from the speed of the dog, I can understand thinking there wasn't enough time for a warning shot.

The video I saw started just before the cop started to retreat. Too bad we don't know what happened before that. A dog belonging to a homeless person that isn't on a leash can't go charging at every single person it sees. It would have been dealt with already if that were the case. I've read that the woman and her dog were often seen in that area. Wonder what made the dog charge?

Arlington seems to be taking a hard line on gray area cases though in my opinion. I expect to read the officer in question has been fired or resigned soon enough.

 

[Sublime]

Except in this case, this guy's SA sucked.

How so? News reports stated he called to the lady to secure her dog and then the dog came at him. I still contend it was bad marksmanship and not a bad decision to shoot the dog. Call it a perfect storm if you will.

 

[DoubleDuty]

He never should have shot at the dog because the woman was in his line of fire thus his SA sucked and so did his decision making.

 

[toddnjoyce]

How so? News reports stated he called to the lady to secure her dog and then the dog came at him. I still contend it was bad marksmanship and not a bad decision to shoot the dog. Call it a perfect storm if you will.

Having now viewed the body cam, to me it appears he had verbal contact and/or visual contact with the victim prior to or simultaneous with dog starting to become a factor.

The quality of the footage isn’t great, but to me it appears the officer establishes contact with the victim, tries to get get the victim to take control of the dog, possibly while creating distance from the dog, while it’s closing. The dog then comes between the officer and the victim at which point shots are fired. All in what seems to be less than 15 seconds.

I’m curious if that is what you see in the footage.

 

[toddnjoyce]

Having now viewed the body cam, to me it appears he had verbal contact and/or visual contact with the victim prior to or simultaneous with dog starting to become a factor.

The quality of the footage isn’t great, but to me it appears the officer establishes contact with the victim, tries to get get the victim to take control of the dog, possibly while creating distance from the dog, while it’s closing. The dog then comes between the officer and the victim at which point shots are fired. All in what seems to be less than 15 seconds.

I’m curious if that is what you see in the footage below.

Video is up - rookie officer who just finished FT last month. dog has minor wound.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/l...-dog/287-41d47d97-f488-434f-97bf-10e5176573f4