The video below of a SWAT team raiding a home in Columbia, Mo. has raised questions over the actions of police officers and charges brought against a family. In the video, the officers shot the family’s two dogs (including one in front of a seven-year-old child) on a drug raid that only netted a small amount of marijuana. Nevertheless, the father Jonathan Whitworth was charged with drug possession and child endangerment.
The police shot and killed the family’s pit bull and wounded its Corgi. On the video, Whitworth asks “Did you shoot my fucking dog? . . . Oh my God, what the fuck did you do that for?”
Credit for this story goes to Daily Tribune reporter Brennan David who obtained the video.
Whitworth pleaded down to possession of paraphernalia and paid the possession fine.
For the full story, click here.
“This War on Drugs is one of the biggest jokes ever played on the American tax payer. It’s time to stop pretending that only scumbags do drugs and face the truth. ”
… the umc town I grew up in was a ‘dry’ town…consequently there was a huge addiction problem. ‘Course way back when, it was pot and beer. The town limits were littered with packy’s for the ‘rents and one of the biggest pot dealers in this suburb was a man in dress blue. The big outcry amongst the kids was all the ‘confiscating’ the cops were doing. The funniest was when the son of the local police chief ran amok down the center of town guns blazing from his squad car and plowed into the local drug store. True story. I think he went on paid leave….pending….something….
Buddy Hinton 1, May 6, 2010 at 10:32 am
Sowwy I huwt youw feewings, Wootieez!
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oh pleeeeeze!
now I may have to laff…much needed this a.m. so thanks for that…..
Takes a real man to shoot a dog in a cage, in front of a little boy.
As Dredd said up above, you think this is bad now, just “Wait until the soldiers who have been breaking down doors overseas come back and take over police work.” Not that they aren’t fine folks, by and large, but they’ve now had years of training to go into residences, shoot everyone inside, and ask questions afterwards.
Buddy Hinton
Sowwy I huwt youw feewings, Wootieez!
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… line ‘em up, bend ‘em over at the waist and deliver several swats to their derrières … They’re the real dregs of society.
I rest my case.
This entire story gives me a stomach ache.
I have never done any illegal drugs but, I can’t for the life of me understand why we don’t legalize and regulate the industry.
Look, almost everybody I know either did drugs when they were young or are doing them now. I’m an oddity. This War on Drugs is one of the biggest jokes ever played on the American tax payer. It’s time to stop pretending that only scumbags do drugs and face the truth. Instead of using our tax dollars to fund SWAT teams and jail cells, let’s make some money and fund things like healthcare and mental-illness clinics.
As for the in-door dog hunting SWAT team, line ’em up, bend ’em over at the waist and deliver several swats to their derrières. Also, suspend any hazard pay they might feel entitled to. They’re the real dregs of society.
Sowwy I huwt youw feewings, Wootieez!
Well, if DC would just wake up and legalize and regulate pot, police wouldn’t need to be so damned trigger happy over what amounted to absolutely nothing, people would have their dogs around a lot longer, and kids wouldn’t be traumatized by unnecessary violence committed by those who purport to protect them.
A corgi? Really, guys??
‘WoobsyCatz?’
grow up Cruddy,everyone here knows that my reason is esconced squarely in my heart. Only an asshole needs to scratch….
those f*ckers shot a CAGED dog? and then a Corgi?
fucking cowards
what kind of an asshole could even shoot a Corgi? it’s like shooting the babysitter…..
One with three years of combat experience in Iraq. When is that magic lightbulb going to go off over your hed, WoobsyCatz?
You know there are more than a million people in the armed forces right. And even more than that who have served. You cite one example and that represents the actions of the military as a whole? It is incredible. I have already had this discussion with buddy and until someone shows me overwhelming evidence that military personnel are more likely to abuse their power then those who haven’t served, I will continue to believe that they make fine police officers.
what kind of an asshole could even shoot a Corgi? it’s like shooting the babysitter…..
Chris,
They are already doing police work and hurting people, while in uniform, cuffing them and placing them under arrest and putting them in military vehicles.
Under order of the governor of a state.
Read the post for a link to a case yesterday from the 5th Circuit that held soldiers immune as “government officials” for so doing.
No joke!
I was chomping at the bit all day yesterday for professor Turley to get this out there. At last!
Gee, I wonder how anyone could think this possibly has anything to do with what is going on Iraq?!?!?/poface
From the Columbia, Missouri Police Department’s web page describing how SWAT officers are selected:
“520. Police or combat military experience. All personnel shall have at least three years of police experience or equivalent expertise and capabilities such as combat military experience.”
http://www.gocolumbiamo.com/Police/Divisions/SWAT/starselect.php
How many times do reasonable people like John need to lay out that “Prohibition Does Not Historically Work” argument before it gets through Washington’s thick head? I know you have to have an IQ less than 80 to run for Senate, but I suppose “they” need somebody that stupid to keep propping up the private prison industry, approving those bloated LE budgets and protecting the interests of the tobacco and pharma industries all in the name of the War on Drugs the Federal government wages against American citizens. Which is not actually a war on drugs but rather a war on liberty, sanity and the individual American people sponsored by special interests plying their lobbyist graft.
Let’s not even mention that taking the illegal profit motive away from drug dealers would do a lot to diffuse that ticking time bomb next door that is Mexico.
No. Don’t mention practical solutions to social and economic problems. It makes the Senators grumpy.
“Wait until the soldiers who have been breaking down doors overseas come back and take over police work.”
All hell is going to break loose. All those undisciplined, crazy, overly aggressive veterans are going to bring hell to the streets of America.
This is why ‘no knock’ warrants need to be outlawed. And why drugs need to be legalized.
It took 13 years of prohibition, to find out it was never going to work. They didn’t repeal prohibition because booze was determined to now be healthy for people. They repealed it to get rid of all the crime & corruption associated with it.
And all the cost in policing, prosecuting, and imprisoning people.
Would you send a buddy that offered you a beer from his six pack to prison for as many years as some get for drugs?
Basically that’s what you are doing with drug laws. And might have done during prohibition when it was illegal. The morality of the situation never changed, ONLY THE LAWS.
And since when is having the punishment worse than the offense done any good?
You can NOT regulate something that is illegal. The only way to regulate something is to legalize it.
Somehow, we haven’t learned that lesson on the “War on Drugs” yet.
Around 80% of people in prisons are there for drug related crimes. States are going broke trying to imprison them all.
We have the highest rate of people imprisoned in the world. One out of every 100 people are in prison.
Police trying to battle drugs have abused citizens rights to the point of battering ram front doors down to enforce unenforceable laws. And this leads to mistakes & corruption in our police forces. And no knock warrants leads to deaths of sometimes innocent people.
And do I even need to mention strip searching thousands of people, including women & children, sometimes in public? (Whether they needed it or not.)
Police even had to go to multiple agency busts, to keep from having cops rip off dealers for their money, when they had just a couple cops investigating drug cases.
Addicts will commit whatever crimes they have to, in order to get money for drugs.
Disease is spread with dirty needles.
The negatives just go on and on.
All drugs should be legalized.
The knee jerk reaction from people is that everyone would then become an addict. And they think you mean legalized, with no controls.
Everyone didn’t become drunks after the repeal of prohibition. And I’m sure that the same is probably true about drugs.
Even as employers don’t like you coming to work drunk, they wouldn’t be tolerating drug use at work either.
The government has ALL drugs lumped together, like they are all the same, but we all know there is a big difference between some of them.
If they were legalized we could at least get people off the worst of them.
After all if you can get pot, heroin, or coke, why bother with meth, PCP or crack.
LEGALIZING DRUGS WON’T GET RID OF THE DRUG USERS.
That’s not the point of legalizing them.
But it would get the drug money out of the hands of gangs, foreign mobsters, and the rest.
And with taxes it would bring in revenue to pay for programs to control it. And with a new industry we would get much needed jobs created.
And this would get rid of all the other problems associated with them, and it would give us a chance to try to ‘control’ the problem more, like we have done with alcohol and cigarettes.
We have fought this “War on Drugs” for decades, to continue to do the same thing and expect a different result would be insanity.
Too much, but I understand the officers need for action. However, not to be trite but the charges are a little over kill. Even though the “Criminal charges” have been resolved does not mean that the state is not still pursuing the “Child Endangerment.”
I have read appellate cases where parental rights have been terminated under the same circumstances as described. So what happened to these charges as most states have “Family Courts”?
Columbia, MO SWAT Team.
You guys win the “Overreacting Assholes” Award.
Heckuva Job, Brownie Shirts!
Wait until the soldiers who have been breaking down doors overseas come back and take over police work.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/05/will-military-become-police-2.html