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.
I’ll be honest, if a policemen did that to a pet of mine, their aim better be good enough to one tap me, otherwise they’re dead.
Advice I got from a cop for self defense situations. If you have to use lethal force, you’re legally better off if you finish your plate because dead people don’t testify. Be aware of that school of thought, because the cops are too.
I’d root for you in this hypothetical situation. Their aim isn’t good enough to one tap, that’s why their protocol for dealing with anything remotely scary is to have 10 of them mag dump onto one target.
You’d probably go to prison for life, though. The right to self defense didn’t apply when the aggressor is a cop.