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Federal Court Rules Unlicensed Pets Are ‘Contraband’ — Police Can Legally Kill Them

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Nikita Smith filed a lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department after they killed her three dogs during a raid of her home in search of pot last year. On Wednesday, a judge absurdly ruled the dogs were considered “contraband,” noting that Smith had no legal basis to sue the police department for shooting and killing her dogs, due to the canines not having been properly licensed.

Subsequently, the federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Smith after a raid of her home by the Detroit police was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge George Caram Steeh.

According to a report by Reason:

The ruling is the first time a federal court has considered the question of whether an unlicensed pet—in violation of city or state code—is protected property under the Fourth Amendment. Federal courts have established that pets are protected from unreasonable seizures (read: killing) by police, but the city of Detroit argued in a motion in March that Smith’s dogs, because they were unlicensed, were “contraband” for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, meaning she had no legitimate property interest in them and therefore no basis to sue the officers or department.

Sadly, Judge Steeh agreed with the city’s ridiculous assertion that since the dogs were not licensed, they were not a legitimate property interest, thus giving Smith no legal basis to sue either the department or the individual officer/s that killed her dogs.

“The Court is aware that this conclusion may not sit well with dog owners and animal lovers in general,” the judge Steeh wrote in his opinion. “The reason for any unease stems from the fact that while pet owners consider their pets to be family members, the law considers pets to be property.”

“The requirements of the Michigan Dog Law and the Detroit City Code, including that all dogs be current with their rabies vaccines, exist to safeguard the public from dangerous animals,” he continued. “When a person owns a dog that is unlicensed, in the eyes of the law it is no different than owning any other type of illegal property or contraband. Without any legitimate possessory interest in the dogs, there can be no violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Think about that for a moment, the judge is legally equating owning an unlicensed dog, with “illegal property or contraband.”

So, does someone owning an unlicensed car give you no Fourth Amendment protections over it, and does it constitute illegal property or contraband simply because it isn’t licensed with the city/state?

Does government somehow have some magical authority to say that if you don’t license your property as they have dictated, then your property is illicit and you have no constitutional protections over it?

Steeh’s opinion went on to reason that since there was no Fourth Amendment violation, then there is no legal basis for a civil rights claim against the city. Additionally, Steeh ruled that even if the dogs had been recognized as her property, the animals presented an imminent threat to police, thus the suit would have been dismissed anyway.

Much in line with the brutal reality that a massive number of dogs across America are being executed, Smith’s suit labeled the police officers’ actions in her home akin to a “dog death squad.” She noted that officers shot one of the dogs through a closed bathroom door. Gruesome photos from the raid revealed a blood-drenched bathroom with Smith’s dog lying in a pool of blood.

In only the past two years, numerous lawsuits have been filed against the Detroit Police Department for executing dogs. Once incident ended with the city paying out $100,000 to settle a suit after police dash cam footage revealed a dog being killed by an officer while still chained up and no threat to officers. The case was one of three lawsuits filed against the DPD for killing dogs during raids in search of cannabis. In another case, filed in June, officers are alleged to have killed a couple’s dogs while they were behind a backyard fence.

The absurdity of raiding people’s homes in an assaultive and violent manner in search of a medicinal plant reeks of government overreach and waste.

The report by Reason noted extremely brutal nature :

A Reason investigation last year found the DPD’s Major Violators Unit, which conducts drug raids in the city, has a track record of leaving dead dogs in its wake. One officer had shot 39 dogs over the course of his career before the raid on Smith’s house, according to public records.

That officer is now up to 73 kills, according to the most recent records obtained by Reason.

Two other officers involved in the Smith raid testified during the trial that they had shot “fewer than 20” and “at least 19” dogs over the course of their careers…

Reason’s review of “destruction of animal” reports filed by Detroit police officers did not find a single instance where a supervisor found that a dog shooting was unjustified.

Does anyone really believe that the officer with 73 dog killings is doing it to protect themselves and other officers from imminent danger? The wanton disregard for life is astonishing and speaks to the extreme levels of brutality we see taking place on American streets on a daily basis.

Once again highlighting the lack of proper training police receive, Judge Steeh’s opinion noted that the “police officers conducting the search had not received any specific training on how to handle animal encounters during raids.”

The court opinion also recognized that Detroit police supervisors found the shooting of Smith’s three dogs all to be justified, but curiously noting:

“However, as in many other cases, the ratifying officers did so without speaking to the officers about what had transpired,” the court wrote.

The search warrant for Smith’s residence came after police received a tip that marijuana was being sold out of the home. The raid, which killed her three dogs, netted a total of 25 grams of marijuana – not even an ounce. Since recent polling support for legalizing cannabis has reached upwards of 80%, perhaps giving police a license to kick down doors, with weapons drawn, in search of a plant, is a recipe for disaster.

Ironically, after the police killed her three dogs, the case against Smith was dismissed due to officers failing to show up for her court hearing. Three murdered dogs, smashed house, no charges, and endless pain and suffering — all for an illegal plant — and this is called justice. (For more from the author of “Federal Court Rules Unlicensed Pets Are ‘Contraband’ — Police Can Legally Kill Them” please click HERE)

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Horrifying Precedent — Federal Appellate Court Rules Cops Can Allow Dogs To Maul Innocent People

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A disturbing and reckless precedent was just set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit which held that the US Constitution does not necessarily require cops to stop a K9 from tearing an innocent person to shreds. Seriously.

According to the ruling in the case of an innocent homeless man being mauled, nearly to death by a K9, police officers who deliberately allow their K9 to maul innocent people will be immune from liability and victims will have zero recourse.

As Slate reports:

The grisly facts of the case are uncontested. One night in 2010, Officer Terence Garrison and his police dog, Bikkel, were tracking a robbery suspect in High Point, North Carolina. Bikkel led Garrison to an abandoned house, then attacked a man crouched behind a bush near the front stoop. Garrison quickly realized that the man did not match the physical description of the suspect. (In fact, he was Christopher Maney, a homeless man accused of no crime.) But Garrison decided that the man might still be dangerous, so he demanded that Maney show his hands before calling off Bikkel. But Maney was using his hands to try to protect himself against the dog and pleaded with Garrison to stop Bikkel’s attack, insisting that he had done nothing wrong. After allowing the mauling to continue for 10 seconds, Garrison finally told Bikkel to stop. He then put Maney in handcuffs and called medical support.

Because Garrison allowed his K9 to continue mauling Maney, the innocent homeless man suffered severe injuries. By the time he was brought to the hospital, Maney was in critical condition. Bikkel had torn apart the top of Maney’s head, removing an entire two-square-inch section of hair, skin, and tissue — which would later require a 16-inch skin graft. The dog also bit Maney’s arms and legs so severely that it led to a brachial artery blood clot with massive blood loss, bruising, and swelling.

After making a long and painful recovery, Maney attempted to hold the officer accountable for his sadistic and torturous act. He then sued Garrison for violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures.

As it stands, a dog bite qualifies as a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. So, Maney argued that the time Garrison allowed the K9 to rip him apart was unreasonable.

However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit did not agree. Insanely enough, the court concluded that Garrison was shielded from liability because he did not violate a “clearly established” constitutional right.

According to the majority, as Slate reports, Fourth Amendment precedents do not unambiguously prohibit officers from “prolong[ing] a dog bite seizure until a subject complies with orders to surrender.” The majority analogized the mauling to a “Terry stop,” during which an officer may briefly stop and frisk individuals on the basis of “reasonable suspicion.” Garrison, the majority concluded, had really just engaged in a type of Terry stop in which “the classic Terry tableau is replaced by something more dynamic.”

Simply put, the court ruled that Garrison’s use of his K9 to maul a man nearly to death, was reasonable because it is no different than a stop and frisk.

Judge Pamela Harris, the only judge with enough humanity left in her to dissent, explained why this ruling is nonsensical and disturbing.

Maney was not himself suspected of any crime, armed or not, and he did not attempt to flee or to resist. Nevertheless, Officer Garrison deliberately subjected him to a canine attack in order to rule out any possibility that he might pose a threat. Whether or not a more customary Terry stop might have been authorized, I think it is clear enough that the circumstances did not justify the sustained mauling of Maney. Clear enough, that is, to warrant denial of qualified immunity to Garrison on Maney’s excessive force claim.

Harris noted that justifying the mauling by comparing it to a Terry stop was particularly ludicrous because “there was not reasonable suspicion sufficient to support a Terry stop” in the first place.

He (Garrison) was aware that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for Maney’s presence near the abandoned house. And I would not count against Maney his failure to stand and identify himself, which Maney—quite reasonably, in hindsight—attributes to his fear that a sudden movement might prompt a dog attack. Citizens are under no free-standing obligation to identify themselves to the police.

While Harris disagreed, the rest of the court believed Garrison “intentionally prolong(ing) a violent assault on Maney to determine whether he might pose a threat,” is entirely just.

It is likely that Maney will appeal this ruling. However, the mere fact that a court would rule in such a manner illustrates a much larger problem in America. Because Americans support a system that continuously refuses to hold police accountable while simultaneously granting them special privileges, cops can quite literally get away with murder. (For more from the author of “Horrifying Precedent — Federal Appellate Court Rules Cops Can Allow Dogs to Maul Innocent People” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Explosives-Sniffing Dog Bites Woman at Airport (+video)

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Photo Credit: The National GuardA Rome woman said Friday an explosives-detection dog working the baggage claim area at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport bit her, unprovoked.

Susan Dubitsky said she and her husband were waiting for her sister to arrive around 4:15 p.m. May 2. As an Atlanta police officer and the dog walked past, the dog bit her on the stomach. A little later, when the officer came back to check on her, Dubitsky said, “the dog tried to come at me another time.

“The dog just didn’t like me,” she said. “It was scary. There was no reason to go after me.”

Dubitsky said EMT’s at the airport treated her hand-size bite wound.

While the dog was working with APD, it is owned by the Transportation Security Administration.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Dog-Eat-Dog World

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Photo Credit: Vanderlei Almeida

If the package of dog food that you regularly purchase for your dog had a picture of a dead dog on the front accompanied by the words, “Fortified with 100 percent natural dog meat!” would you still buy it? Probably not. And yet this might very well be what you are scanning at the grocery store checkout and scooping into your dog’s bowl.

Dog food is made from many strange things, only a few of which are evident in the list of ingredients. The packaging tends to depict fat, healthy chickens; vegetables that look like they ought to win a ribbon at the county fair; and either thick, juicy steaks or sedate-looking cows. But at around $15 for a 15-pound bag of dry food, nobody is spending enough money to turn a T-bone into dog food. The stuff that ends up in dog food is material that can’t be sold as food for humans. We have different standards for what our animals eat from what we would put in our own mouths, but where should we draw the line?

Under Food and Drug Administration regulations, only about 50 percent of a cow can be sold for human consumption. The hide, bones, digestive system and it contents, brain, feces, udders, and various other undesirable parts are all left over after a cow is slaughtered and butchered. The stuff that can’t even go into hotdogs gets consolidated and shipped to rendering plants. Slaughterhouses that handle pigs and chickens also send their leftovers to rendering plants. So do many other facilities that find themselves with large volumes of otherwise unusable dead animal parts, including animal shelters and veterinary clinics that euthanize a lot of animals.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Service Dog Falls to Death While Doing Security Sweep for Biden

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NEW ORLEANS — A Secret Service dog fell to its death off a New Orleans parking garage while conducting a security sweep for Vice President Biden.

WWL-TV reports the dog fell off the six-story roof at the Premier Parking garage adjacent to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where Biden was speaking for Sen. Mary Landrieu’s re-election fundraiser.

The Belgian shepherd was rushed to Metairie Veterinary hospital by motorcade but attempts to revive the dog proved unsuccessful.

Read more from this story HERE.