Cristofle

The chief of this department is really starting to irritate me. He held a press conference basically indicating you can't hold the cop responsible because an Austin police officer was recently killed. I'm truly sorry to hear that, I think cop killers are the scum of the earth, but #1, if this officer was THAT traumatized, he had no business on the job and #2, I'm not sure what that has to do with a barking dog. The officer who died wasn't killed by a dog. Obviously, some animal control reports regarding the dead dog (which any dog owner in the US could tell you are not serious or alarming reports, just over-reactive people terrified of dogs) were pretty clear leaked by the department. This- and similar crap was pulled by the Sanford police department- is the kind of thing that makes people not trust cops even if most of it is unwarranted. Deflecting blame isn't going to make you any more popular. There's a tape of this incident. We know what happened. We know there was no time for some deadly dog attack, and that the officer didn't give the owner ANY time to restrain the dog before shooting him. We know he pulled his gun too quickly on an unarmed man as it was.