COPS SHOULD HAVE CALLED SPCA BEFORE SHOOTING DOG

Your recent story about the RCMP shooting a dog while searching for a
marijuana-grow operation is disturbingly reminiscent of an incident in
Abbotsford two years ago, where a dog was shot and killed by the local
police in front of horrified children.

A search warrant is not a licence to kill family dogs which cannot
distinguish between lawful and unlawful intruders.

The 14-year-old owner of the dog displays considerably more common sense
than the idiots executing this warrant, as she mentioned various reasonable
alternatives.

The pious and predictable excuse by the RCMP for not contacting the SPCA
because they had "safety concerns" is little more than rehearsed babble.

The reason SPCA staff often accompany the police in these circumstances is
precisely because they are equipped to deal with such dogs. They may have
been able to prevent what happened here, as they have done on numerous
other occasions. Surely, a marijuana-grow operation would not have
disappeared in the time it took to summon the SPCA.

Complaints about police misconduct are generally a waste of time as
officers end up investigating and, almost invariably, exonerating themselves.

The most effective way to curb this high-handed and quite unnecessary
action by the police would be with a court ruling that found such conduct
amounted to an unreasonable search; thereby warranting exclusion of seized
evidence.

That would drive the message home and, you can bet, would result in an
immediate change in police procedure.

Alexandra Stolte,

Surrey