H/T The Holy BlogfatherCops: "If we have to get a warrant...we're gonna shoot and kill your dogs"
More and more stories like this bubbling to the surface. And not from crazy-left sources or the fevered mind of Alex Jones, either...
Eric Crinnian, an attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, says police came to his door looking for parole violators, and got upset when he refused them permission to tramp through his house and paw through his possessions. In fact, he claims, one cop went so far as to threaten to shoot his dogs if he made them abide by the requirements of the law by getting a search warrant to look through his home. Remarkably, a criminal justice professor says the police actions may not be illegal, though they could be awkward in court.
The police department is following the usual script, insisting it is
John Hamilton, an associate professor of criminal justice administration at Park University and a retired Major with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department, told the news station that the officers' threats may not be illegal, though they're inappropriate and it's possible they violate department policy. He also pointed to the matter of appearances, saying that such behavior "makes it tenuous when you appear in front of the court in a case like that."
But Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School, isn't convinced that it's legal to threaten to shoot people's dogs and otherwise humiliate them if they insist on the protections of the Fourth Amendment. "It would in my view be a little more than inappropriate and could constitute a crime. While it could be a tough case on this evidence, one possibility would be a criminal threat."
The soldier/cartoonist Bill Mauldin once said that, in any city newly occupied by a foreign army, the two groups who could be counted on for cringing servility to the new masters were hoteliers and cops. Recently we've seen waaaay too many examples of how American cops would behave if Ogabe were to finally go the full Stalin. For sure, The One would have plenty of armed opposition - but I suspect that the vast majority of cops, bribed with taxpayers' money and rendered "fireproof" by public-sector union contracts, would stand firmly behind him.