Roommates who sued a Maryland county Monday claim police officers illegally entered their apartment without a warrant, detained them at gunpoint without justification and unnecessarily shot their pet dog, which was left paralyzed and ultimately euthanized.
The dog, a boxer mix named Hennessey, did not attack the three officers who entered the apartment before two of them shot the animal with their firearms and the third fired a stun gun at it, according to the federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks at least $16 million in damages over the June 2, 2021 encounter, which started with Prince George’s County police officers responding to a report of a dog bite at an apartment complex where the four plaintiffs lived. What happened next was captured on police body camera video and video from a plaintiff’s cellphone.
Someone shared in another thread that police officers in the U.S. kill something like 10,000 dogs a year. Psychopaths murder dogs. You don’t become a cop unless you’re a psychopath.
Not true, I know I guy who got fired from the company I worked for a few years ago, so what did he do when he wasn’t good at the job, he became a police officer.
Are you sure he wasn’t a psychopath?
I’m sure, I played soccer with him and hung out with him a few times outside of work. Pretty sure I would have noticed if he was a psychopath. Believe it or not, not everybody is a psychopath, and psychology is more complex than the black and white labels people like to dole out in the comments section on the internet.
Never, ever let a cop into your home if you have a dog. Cops are driven by fear and sadism.
Never, ever let a cop into your home
they can come back with a warrant or not at all. the police are absolutely not here to help and nothing will be made better by police involvement.
Not sure if that person was me, but reposting a recent comment I made to that effect anyhow. The estimate and the word “epidemic” both originate from a DOJ report of all things.
I believe the DOJ report is linked somewhere in that article, if not I’ll dig it up if requested.
Cops in this country kill so many dogs each year that a specialist at the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) community-oriented program services office says it has become an “epidemic.” The DOJ estimates that around 25 to 30 dogs are killed by cops every day, with some numbers as high as 10,000 per year. The totals could, in fact, be higher, since most police agencies do not formally track officer-involved shootings involving animals.
Pretty fucked up, but not surprising… Why do settlements come from uninvolved taxpayers, rather than the police “union”!?
Paying damages out of police retirement founds would be a simple, one step, foolproof solution to this problem. You don’t want lower retirement? Stop breaking the law. Oh, you’re one of the 5 good cops in the country and this would hurt you even though you did nothing wrong? Actually report the bad cops instead just watching. Thanks.
Require officers to carry liability insurance like doctors
Except I don’t think the officers are ever found liable, only the police departments.
The legal fiction that is qualified immunity needs to be banned. It was just made up buy judges.
This is exactly the solution. I won’t hold my breath though…
Not being able to breathe and police brutality? Name a more infamous combo…
It’s really not a solution. It just means when the pension fund gets low, they get bailouts from government anyway.
The police are funded by taxpayers, so it doesn’t matter if it’s the city or the police that pay for it, you still foot the bill no matter what. The only solution where citizens don’t lose is if cops are required to carry personal malpractice insurance, like doctors. IMO making cops personally liable for their murders is a good place to start.
it does matter though because if the money for paying for damages illegally caused by police comes out of their budget they’ll at least feel that until the next year’s budget kicks in. As-is, police are completely removed from any responsibility for their actions.
FWIW, these judgements are typically paid by the city’s insurance, although that’s also funded by the taxpayers. I don’t know how department policies and the like affect the premiums, but I would really be interested in learning.
These people did nothing wrong and were accosted by armed thugs in their own home. The dog did nothing wrong and was murdered. The taxpayers did nothing wrong and will pay out tons of money to these people. The police, who did everything wrong, will face no repercussions for their actions because qualified immunity dictates that they didn’t necessarily know that holding innocent people at gunpoint violates their rights.
When police break the law, they should be tried on a matter of whether or not the taxpayers are responsible for what occurred.
People like this should never get our tax dollars spent on their well-being.
We should be way more angry about this than we are.
When police break the law, they should be tried
that would be a hell of a start
We should be way more angry about this than we are.
A lot of time, effort and money is spent convincing people that the police and their abuse are things that only happens to those people.
“ The county offered to compensate Umana for her veterinary bills if she agreed to refrain from publicly speaking about the shooting, but she rejected the offer, according to her lawsuit.”
Sickening
the people paying hush money are usually the good guys
Fun fact about this blatantly criminal police department, they currently have an officer on trial for murder because he shot a suspect 7 times while that suspect was HANDCUFFED AND IN THE FUCKING POLICE CAR
This incident happened four years ago, and taxpayers who did nothing wrong have already settled with the victim’s family for millions. The judge presiding over the case has openly accused the prosecution of sandbagging the case for four years and rejected a plea deal the prosecution offered the officer because the victim’s family protested that it was too lenient. This man shot and killed a cooperative, restrained suspect and the prosecution is doing everything they can to let him off the hook, down to and including just not having a trial because they think he’ll be convicted. This is what we mean when we say ACAB, that the police engage in blatant, open criminality up to and including murder and then an entire system does everything it can to avoid holding them responsible. Same story with Jackie Johnson, the DA who initially failed to charge the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery. She’s been charged with misconduct as well, but it’s been years and she’s not even been arraigned. She violated the law and her oath of office in order to cover up a lynching because one of the murderers is an ex-cop and friend of hers, and she’s being protected from the consequences of enabling a lynch mob by a system that knows that the cops are there to use violence to protect aristocrats from the underclass.
ACAB.
Leak the footage perhaps?
I’ll just say this. If you name your pet after liquor, I’m automatically assuming you’re trashy. Police were there to investigate a dog biting incident, and I somehow doubt these 4 are faultless.
based entirely on that trashy ass pet name.
Did they name their dog after liquor?
Maybe they adopted the dog with that name.
Maybe it’s named after W. Louis Hennessy, an American jurist who serves as judge in the District Court for Charles County, Maryland.
Maybe it’s named after the NY Jets long snapper.
Maybe your preconceptions and biases speak more about you than the people in the story.
Be better.
You’re right, we should strip away the rights of anyone with a dog name you don’t like. That feels like a normal and sane thing to do.
Deciding they deserve what they got because you think they’re trashy is what makes a person trashy, not naming a pet after booze. JFC what an unhinged take.
Yeah if you can just take your opinion and shove it up your arse. That’d be great.
I realize I’m inviting down votes as well, but, ignoring the dog’s name, did he actually bite someone? If so, I can understand why the police were there and that is different from officers randomly barging into an apartment and shooting whatever dog happens to be around (which is a great story to stir people up and get clicks). Though it is still odd how it was handled, I would expect an animal control officer to be first to make contact with the dog’s owners. Not to go straight to shooting the dog?
Are the police the correct organization to handle a potential dog bite?
The dog was inside the apartment which they illegally entered. They should never have come into contact with the dog at all.
If the dog had actually bitten someone there are proper procedures to deal with that situation. Cops aren’t a murder squad who get to apply justice on the fly.
