On the Virtue of not Jumping to Conclusions

Back in February, the Columbia Police Department raided the house of a suspected drug dealer at 8:30pm. Upon entering, the police encountered two dogs, which were shot -killing one and wounding the other. The police didn't find the suspected drugs, but instead found paraphernalia and small amounts of marijuana. The trial now concluded (by pea bargain), the video has been released to YouTube.

And some people are apoplectic.

Now, there are some general policy things to maybe worry about. For example, it's usually considered a bad idea to serve a warrant at night because of the risk of an innocent suspect thinking he's being burglarized. I recall reading that many places determine "night" as 9:00pm, and perhaps we'd like to revisit that. I express no opinion the matter as I can see that we might want to raid in the evening shortly before bed because that's when a suspect is most vulnerable.

We might like to revisit our warrant policy about drug raids. The police say they acted quickly on an informant, but apparently not quickly enough -or the information was bad. The 9:00pm rule might not have mattered in this case because of the time constraint. Again, I express no opinion on the matter. As the police say, there's a trade-off. The more time you spend confirming the evidence, the more time there is for the drugs to move onto the street.

But that's not what commenters are howling about. No, they're incensed that a dog got shot while a child was in the house. Here's the thing -we don't know anything about the events except that they happened. The video enters the house after the first shot and never leaves the living room, so while we hear barking and whining and shooting and then the reactions of the residents, we don't actually know anything about the shooting.

"Oh, how could they shoot that boy's pets!?" Well, according to the report, they shot a pit bull and a corgi. Which is to say, cuteness aside, they shot an attack dog and watch dog. I'm sure the drug dealers and their children love their working animals, but this was not necessarilly a harmless lapdog. The news reports are not specific, the YouTube description -which I take with a shaker of salt -is that the pit bull was caged, but since we don't see anything, we don't actually know.

It might not have been a good shooting. IA report is expected in a couple of weeks and will probably answer a lot of questions. What was the warrant for, was it justified, should they have gone when they did, does CPD procedure need to be revised, were the dogs accurately percieved as a threat or should the officer have known they were no danger, should the gun have been fired inside an occupied house? We don't know any of that, and it's kinda important to answer these questions before we pass judgment.

But please, don't let that stop us from preaching and preening about the pigs.

Oh, and in response to Megan McArdle's smart-alec commenter: when they knock six times and announce "Police, Search Warrant!" twice, and then pour into your living room wearing blue uniforms and vests marked "Police," yes you assume they're cops.