Alyrium Denryle wrote:
And how do they respond to being scared? How do they respond in situations where they are trapped and their fight or flight instinct is engaged? Because all this bird egg stuff is sweet and is evidence of how gentle the dog can be, but it is not applicable to a situation that could be defined as scary to the dog.
Generally? They hide under a table/bed/porch. They are the WORST guard dogs possible, perhaps with the exception of some of teacup breeds, save that it is temperament, and not size.
I had a lab when I was a kid. I was walking the dog and was threatened by kids from school that didn't like me. The dog didn't cower, it barked loudly, bared its teeth and I had to hold it back. Labs do not "generally" cower at all. They aren't good
guard dogs but they are not the wilting flowers you're pretending.
How exactly, again, did the cop scare the dog that much? Did he start taking pot shots at it? There is almost no animal in the world, let alone a dog, that when scared will turn and fight if it has another option. Even african predators will retreat, or hold their ground and display. Dogs are no different. If the cop cornered the dog, then he is at fault and should have backed the fuck off rather than shoot. Your argument is self-defeating.
No, his argument is not self defeating because dogs will only back into a corner like that if they perceive a threat only to themself. You are simply cherry-picking dog behavior in order to make veiled implications the officer did this on purpose. Seeing as the family didn't complain of bullet holes anywhere nor is there any evidence he did so, you are doing nothing more than trying to score rhetorical points.
Dogs will attack people that intrude on their territory; their "den" without backing down or displaying. The dog may or may not have been scared; perceiving a threat is not the same as being scared.
In this case, you can derive motive. The person with the knife has a reason to be advancing toward the cop in a threatening manner, they generally articulate their intention to injure the police officer, and the knife is generally in the person's hand or close by. There is evidence that backs up the officer's claim.
And dogs, being pre-equipped with weapons and not using tools would never be able to provide that kind of evidence. You are using the physiology of the dog to subtly create a burden of proof that is impossible to satsify.
Now, take the opposite. A cop (not this one, but for the sake of argument) is a sadistic prick/has a really bad week and shoots a dog for no reason. You will defend that officer apparently against rather significant opposition based only on his word, a mountain full of unjustified assumptions that run counter to the known behavior of the dogs breed and the individual dog... and you will do so purely on the say so of that officer.
Except that you have no evidence whatsoever that the cop (this one or hypothetical) is a sadistic prick or had a bad week; in fact both are entirely subejctive assertions.
The officer was actually there and observed the behavior and that is more powerful evidence than general breed temperment or the dog's history in totally dissimilar situations.
No. It wont. And generally the cop would only be confronted with such an individual if said person was suspected of a crime/had gone dangerously insane/had already been dangerously insane.
Which has happened in the past.
The dog is not dangerously insane, the dog was not suspected of a crime giving the officer a reason to actually confront the dog, and the chances of the dog going insane are very very low.
The chances of a person going insane are very low; dogs cannot commit crimes, and you do not know the dog's mental state at that time. Moreover, perception of threat could cause a dog to react in a way a person would not. Finally, it is disingenuous to point out that the dog committed no crime; the police had a report of a burglar alarm and their duty to investigate did require them to confront the dog.
When the correlation between 1 set of behavior in one circumstance and its behavior in another is very very strong, we call that correlation a behavioral syndrome.
Why? Because the same physiological pathways that lead to a dog being just fine with kids, lead to them not being aggressive or defenses in other sets of conditions. Same cause, high correlation. So yes, the behavior in one set of conditions DOES mean that they will behave similarly in others.
No, it means no such thing. It means that there is a
higher likelyhood they will behave similarly in other situations, and that likelyhood is in part dependant on the similarity of the siutations.
Take a look at a lab. You notice those floppy ears, big eyes... puppy features? Same fucking cause.
"Labs are cute" is not an argument.
When the two behaviors have the same physiological cause, it is not a leap. That said, I am not and have not said that the cop was certainly in the wrong. Only that the probability was amazingly small that he was not.
The behaviors are not caused exclusively by physiology; they are also caused by the circumstances. The fact is that the probability is anything but amazingly small. On the contrary, the probability is mazingly small that the circumstances were anything but as the officer describes.
You on the other hand have relied on suppositions that are counter-indicated by all available evidence in your desperate attempt to defend another cop. Admirable, but in this case misguided.
Sorry, but they are not counter-indicated by any evidence whatsoever. Conjecture about this situation based on gneeral behavior of other dogs in dissimilar situations and this dog, again in dissimilar situations.
There's nothing the least bit desperate about attempts to defend this cop. What's desperate is your attempt to find fault because this is really about your personal sensibilities being outraged.
Some kind of witness, the dog having a history of freak aggressive incidents. Anything that would give a rational person the reasonable expectation that perhaps the dog was aggressive. In this case, we have the say so of a cop that under a likely scenario has incentive to lie.
Except that the sceanrio is not likely. The likely scenario is that the dog did what he said it did. All you're doing is attempting to make the standard impossible to satisfy; the officer cannot magically conjure a witness, and why should the dog need to have a history of acting aggressively? Family pets tht normally cause no trouble are well known to become aggressive defending their "pack".
Your claim of "incentive to lie" is simply Appeal to Motive, and a motive you are assuming he has bsed on nothing but conjecture.
Do we typically allow people accused of murder to claim self defense with no additional evidence?
No, because human beings are not dogs; they can be spoken to and do not come pre-equipped with weapons. If the officer came into the back yard an encountered a person, he would give verbal commands forst; verbal commands a dog cannot understand. If the person charged him unarmed, he would use an alternate weapon. If the person charged him with a knife (the equivalent of the dog's teeth) he would shoot. That range of options is not available with dogs because dogs are not capable of communicating beyond the very rudimentary, cannot be reasoned with, are automatically armed, and are less vulenrable to less-lethal weapons.
No, you dont. You do however have to have the reasonable expectation that you will be harmed, and affirmative defenses like that require evidence. In this case, the officer's word and the dog's past behavior are all we have. Expectation of harm=not reasonable. Were a witness to come forward that would change.
You have no evidence beyond your own conjecture and your own standards that there was anything unreasonable about the expectation of harm here.
More to the point, this is not a simple case of self defense, and so requiring an affirmative defense is not necessarily applicable. Unlike a civilian who is attacked by an assailant, the officer is not merely defending himself, he is executing his official duties by being there in the first place. He does not have an option to not investigate the alarm.
I never said blood drawn=ability to act either. I said it would, in the absence of a witness, satisfy the burden of proof on the officer. It is the only thing that really can. In any self defense case the defense must show that the killer had a reasonable expectation that they would be harmed. That is just not here.
In otehr words, reasonable expectation of harm can only be satisfied by harm, unless there was a witness. Such as who, at a burglar alarm call? A second officer? Then you'd be moving the goalposts and claiming he's covering his buddy.
The officers word alone, in the absence of evidence that he is lying, satisfies the burden of proof. The burden of proof lies on those making the assertion of lying, and mere conjecture based on past behavior in dissimilar situations is not proof. It is certainly not enough proof tosatisfy a court of law.
No. I am not doing that. Logic and evidence do that for me. You are a cop. If you have a suspect who is suspected of a crime for a reasonable reason and when confronted with the evidence available has nothing to say but "Trust me, I am an X" would you simply take his word for it?
You are not using either logic or evidence and apparently do not understand either concept. Your example is utterly irrelevant; it would be as if you were trying to charge that suspect with a crime based on nothing more than his crimes in the past.
Freak incidents like that are unfortunate. I do believe it is why police have partners, cameras, etc.
Police have partners for safety and cameras in ther car primarily for the same reason. The point of those things is not so that whenever they are absent we can assume the officer is lying.
Since when did the accused say so become evidence?
He's not accused of anything. Moreover, the accused's say so is evidence jsut like anyone else's testimony. If a defendant takes the stand, you cannot disregard his testimony simply beause he is the defendant, nor even on the basis that he "has an incentive to lie" because he is on trial. That's simply presumption of guilt.
Which could more easily given all the other evidence be a lie to cover up the shame of a tragic mistake.
Not more easily at all. Again, simply your myopic assumptions because you're outraged at an animal being harmed.
When the physiology by which aggressive behavior is controlled is the same, yes, I do, and it is.
Aggressive behavior is controlled primarily by the situation, not by physiology. Football players are highly aggressive on the football field but generally not in any other situation. Physiology does not prevent them from exercising aggression based on the situation.
I can for example predict with a high degree of accuracy how many animals will react in one situation given its behavior in other, often far more disparate situations provided the mechanisms are the same. You can do the same with people. A person who is aggressive or friendly in one stressful situation is highly likely to aggressive or friendly in another stressful situation. Frankly being poked, prodded and jumped on by three year olds is MORE stressful than a guy calmly entering your yard.
You have no idea what is or isn't more stressful to the dog. The man is an unknown, he is in the "pack's" territory, and he is an adult male. The three year olds are small puppy-like creatures, familiar to the dog. You're just making up bullshit.
Shit like this is why I'm kind of glad it isn't legal to go around punching people in the crotch. You'd be able to track my movement from orbit from the sheer mass of idiots I'd leave lying on the ground clutching their privates in my wake. -- Mr. Coffee
