Demarkus PeeplesAround noon on Tuesday, Dec. 2, [Demarkus] Peeples was watching TV at home when he heard a knock at the front door. When he looked out the door’s top window, he saw a group of men standing on his porch wearing jeans and T-shirts, a couple of them looking a little ratty. To get a better look, he went to a side window and peeked through the drawn blinds. “Honestly, they looked like they were transients,” he said. The men, it ends up, were undercover narcotics officers who were there on a complaint about drug activity at that address—Peeples was later told that it had to do with a “chemical smell.” Peeples said the men—he estimates there were six—never announced who they were.
Peeples waited until they circled back to the front of his house, at which point he opened his back door to investigate. That’s when his dog, a three-year-old Staffy named Eygpt ran out. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, except that one of the police officers had left the backyard gate open. The dog ran out, and down Peeple’s driveway toward the officers, at which point they shot it three times. Even the police concede the dog never attacked. It only gets worse from there. The police then arrested Peeples on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon—the weapon being his now dying dog. Peeples says they then euthanized his dog, despite his explicit instructions not to.
“Do not kill my dog; do everything you can to save my dog,” he remembers yelling. When he saw Chris Victor, his neighbor, he asked him to make sure Egypt was kept alive. Victor said he called animal control to let them know he’d cover any cost for Egypt’s care, but by the time his call got through, Egypt had been euthanized. DeSousa said the dog was put down immediately after arriving. The police didn’t find the meth lab they were presumably looking for. They did apparently find a misdemeanor amount of marijuana in Peeple’s garage—marijuana that, according to the article, was “so old that it disintegrated upon contact.”
Maybe when the city gets tired of lawsuits, this crap will end.
Thanks to Mister Justin
30,
Yes. I see your point. People with guns that can kill you AND/OR make your life miserable with trumped up charges should be given “bad day” gifts similar to the Laura Secord cashier who short changed you 75c. Good logic there.
As for robberies… well, of COURSE you’re going to call the police. You have to get an “official” report for your insurance company. It’s not like you expect the police to show up BEFORE they rob you. Or whatever. Cops are a necessary evil. Unfortunately, they can be as evil, or worse, than the people they are supposed to protect us from.
part of the problem is that there are WAY too many undercover cops. a bunch of derelict-looking guys appear on your porch and go prowling around on your property, WTF are you supposed to do?
and #24 – looking out your window at said derelicts is “suspicious?” yeah, right …
$29 – Mr. Fusion
>>It has often been used as an excuse, but is
>>anyone really aware of a cop who has put his
>>life on the line for the people?
Of course not. I’ve seen ’em on TV (Law & Order, CSI, etc.) but not in real life. Heck, with all the dogs there are to shoot, all the guys with 20-year-old weed in their garage, and all the speeding tickets they have to write out after reviewing the traffic-cams, there’s not much time left over for heroics.
Don’t people get it. Cops can do no wrong. They don’t uphold the law, they are the law.
“On the other hand everybody posting here is going to call the cops if they get robbed or whatever.”
My house got robbed once, and did call the cops telling them that I thought I kneew who did it. They refused to investigate him and said that I didn’t have any witnesses.
I canvased the neighborhood and actually found someone who saw the person committing the robbery. The cops said it was my “problem” and refused to do anything.
Of course, my cops are LA county…not good enough to make the LAPD.
I’m not sure this was ever on DU. Another example of a “justified” police shoot dog incident-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299.html
For many people pets are equal members of the family. No apology or monetary compensation can replace them.
Stop arguing about this. Ze police are always right! And none of YOU are qualified to know what is in your best intrest!Only the police and the governament are qualified to rule over you.
Now go back to sleep and pay no attention to this!
#28 you don’t need a warrant to go up to someones door and knock. Entering and searching are another matter. Where you do get your law knowledge anyway? If the PD was just there to question him, it didn’t say in the article, then it would be permissible, he could always had said no, and closed the door. And he DID have Marijuana in his garage, so he wasn’t exactly innocent.
“On the other hand everybody posting here is going to call the cops if they get robbed or whatever.”
Actually, doing what I do, that depends entirely on both where I was robbed and what cops would be called. No fucking way will I call the cops either where I live or where I work. Some of the smaller nearby towns, sure, but small town cops tend to be more less troublesome.
“Only the police and the governament are qualified to rule over you.”
Sorry – I’m paid by the government to tell them they fucked up (although they, strangely, don’t appreciate it when it’s done in so concise a manner.) So I’m really just doing my job.
“#28 you don’t need a warrant to go up to someones door and knock. Entering and searching are another matter. Where you do get your law knowledge anyway? If the PD was just there to question him, it didn’t say in the article, then it would be permissible, he could always had said no, and closed the door. And he DID have Marijuana in his garage, so he wasn’t exactly innocent.”
All true – well, trueish. The article implies that the police *were* on his property, not just knocking on his front door, and therefore were trespassing. But assuming you’re right, the police themselves stated in the article the dog wasn’t assaulting anyone. They simply shot it for no reason.
So please don’t try and pick and choose which facts to ignore on this one. The police did do wrong here. (By your position, police would have the right to kill *anyone*’s dog, simply because “drug dealers use drugs as weapons”. The totality of the circumstances here fails, as the dog was only doing what dogs tend to do – that is, run around and play.)
Cops are pretty bad. No cops is worse.
Government is pretty bad. No gov is worse.
Doctors are pretty bad. No Docs is worse.
Canned/preserved food is pretty bad. No Food is Worse.
Military adventurism is pretty bad. No Military is worse.
We ain’t getting out alive.
You know we always talk about the “slippery slope” Well guess what, we are on that slope. We can’t blame the poor cops.
They are just trying to follow the law. Until such time as us citizens DEMAND that the idiots who write the laws show some common sense we are stuck with this kind of crap.
Police will do whatever they are allowed to do, so the only way to control them is to limit what they can and will do.
I am old enough to remember the “war on poverty”, the “war on illiteracy”, the war on drugs, the “war on terrorism”, etc. every time we have a war on anything we get this stupidity.
Let’s start letting everyone go to hell in their own hand basket and save our POLICE for stuff that is important. REMEMBER Larceny, Kidnapping, Assault, Murder, Robbery, and all that stuff that were REAL crime.
Cop-friendly juries will always exonerate the corrupt cops. Why should they fear the citizen?
So gquaglia,
Don’t you think the police need a damn good reason for opening up your gate and looking around your yard? Don’t you think that you might be a little cautious of opening the door to a group of f’n strange men? Why is it that police dogs are more valuable than someone’s protective and loyal pet? If they didn’t have a search warrant, they were in the WRONG! Plain and simple. Get some better evidence before you act like a bunch of idiots. Oh and they found some pot that “disintegrated” upon touching… watch out now! He is such a bad guy that he lets his stash sit around until it is un-smokeable! What a gangster!
Just wait until your ass is on the wrong side of the police thanks to some false information! My stepfather was close to being shot (officer’s words) while trying to protect us with his own gun when some lunatic was trying to bust down our front door. The police dispatcher f’d up big time and relayed that it was a hostage situation. Nothing like being a child and having to walk out with your hands up and having shotguns pointed at you. That happened in California too.
So the fact that they can screw up on non-emergency situations doesn’t bode well for their department. When these things happen, someone needs to take responsibility and that is exactly what they should do for killing his dog and acting irresponsibly on false information.
Sounds pretty familiar to there being no weapons of mass destruction…