North Wales Police deliberately mow down dog

doofer said:
All they would have had to have done is drive along following the dog with their emergency beacons on until they got someone there that could deal with the dog properly or the dog got off the carriage way of it's own accord. They could even have tasered it rather than run it over.
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Unless they dog has some understanding of traffic flow directions and lane discipline, I'm not sure how that'd help. It could easily run into the opposite carriageway, turn around and run back towards oncoming traffic, or leave the road entirely only to come back on five minutes later and cause an incident.

Use of Taser on dogs has mixed results, sometimes it can subdue them, sometimes it just makes them angrier and even less predictable. That's assuming officers at the scene were even equipped with Taser, and were able to get close enough to deploy it safely.

Nix said:
Theory: Dog was distressed. Dog bit police officer. Officer gets mad. Officer runs dog over in retaliation. Officer used red tape to cover up actions.
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Reality: Police officers are human beings just like anyone else, exhausted other available practical options and sought advise from supervising officers/control room before resolving the situation. RPU cars also have video cameras which would have almost definitely been reviewed following the incident given that it's a use of a force.
 
wondering how easy it is to aim for a dog. i doubt the dog would just stand there and watch the car come towards it.

so how did the police go about running it down.
 
thebennyboy said:
There are several temporary dot-matrix signs around due to ongoing work in the tunnels recents, so google will likely not be showing those.
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Those temporary signs are almost certainly fixed messages.

thebennyboy said:
Contradictory statements, easy to herd but needs to be tazered?
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What's contradictory about them? You don't know the circumstances of either case. Maybe the police cars that were acting as a rolling roadblock didn't have tasers on them, or the guy that tasered the sheep was himself and had to deal with the situation as best he could.

Much harder to herd a dog or taser it either way.
 
TheVoice said:
Reality: Police officers are human beings just like anyone else, exhausted other available practical options and sought advise from supervising officers/control room before resolving the situation. RPU cars also have video cameras which would have almost definitely been reviewed following the incident given that it's a use of a force.
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The police officer may have genuinely made a mistake but the use of force is then deemed non-proportionate so gets covered up by red tape to avoid embarrassment.

Fact: The police have a very well documented history of covering things up when it suits them.

I'm not saying that's what's happened here, though, hence the prefix 'theory'.

There are many good officers out there, but let's not delude ourselves that they're all exemplary citizens. There are bad eggs everywhere.
 
Dis86 said:
Suggests they use tasers, posts a link showing where police have tasered animals and got flak for it!
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Where did i suggest that? :rolleyes:

I was suggesting that officers up here don't seem to be very clued up on how to handle animals.

Jokester said:
Those temporary signs are almost certainly fixed messages.


What's contradictory about them? You don't know the circumstances of either case. Maybe the police cars that were acting as a rolling roadblock didn't have tasers on them, or the guy that tasered the sheep was himself and had to deal with the situation as best he could.

Much harder to herd a dog or taser it either way.
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Nope, they are remotely controlled: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2...4!1s8P3SN2Qfl5sSsdATif9HmQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Most traffic cops here are tazer trained, considering a traffic officer got bitten it would have been in tazer range. :p
 
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thebennyboy said:
Where did i suggest that? :rolleyes:

I was suggesting that officers up here don't seem to be very clued up on how to handle animals.

Most traffic cops here are tazer trained, considering a traffic officer got bitten it would have been in tazer range. :p
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Right there. And the bit where you said they shouldn't have run it over.

So tell us, you have a fast unpredictable animal running over a high speed road, in the dark.
What do you do?
Wait for someone to clip it and have it suffer?
Wait for someone to swerve to miss it resulting in a potentially fatal crash?
Have officers close the road shutting down a major transport link for an unknown amount of time using an expensive public resource and moving demand from where it's potentially more needed to try and chase an animal that has already been shown to attack?
Or take it out swiftly?
 
Dis86 said:
Right there. And the bit where you said they shouldn't have run it over.

So tell us, you have a fast unpredictable animal running over a high speed road, in the dark.
What do you do?
Wait for someone to clip it and have it suffer?
Wait for someone to swerve to miss it resulting in a potentially fatal crash?
Have officers close the road shutting down a major transport link for an unknown amount of time using an expensive public resource and moving demand from where it's potentially more needed to try and chase an animal that has already been shown to attack?
Or take it out swiftly?
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Would they not have to close the road to 'take it out' as you so eloquently put it?

You cant exactly go hurtling down the carriageway aiming for Fido not knowing what lane you will end up in to make an impact without closing the road down first, can you?
 
Dis86 said:
So tell us, you have a fast unpredictable animal running over a high speed road, in the dark.
What do you do?
Wait for someone to clip it and have it suffer?
Wait for someone to swerve to miss it resulting in a potentially fatal crash?
Have officers close the road shutting down a major transport link for an unknown amount of time using an expensive public resource and moving demand from where it's potentially more needed to try and chase an animal that has already been shown to attack?
Or take it out swiftly?
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Call a competent officer that had a basic understanding of how to handle animals, a dog handler maybe and grab it with a capture noose. The officer who was bitten clearly had no idea how to even remotely deal with a distressed dog.

Close the section of the road for 15 - 20 minutes using the readily available dot-matrix signs and allow a trained officer to capture the dog. Drivers have suffered longer delays with the roadworks that have been going on in the tunnels for 9 weeks straight, i'm sure those few drivers on the road at 3AM would be delighted to know that cops ran down an animal because they couldn't be bothered to do it properly, i.e. without killing an innocent animal.
 
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Hindsight.

It's a wonderful thing.

Edit: That and the signs are in the wrong place, plus how easy is it to get someone trained in animals at 3am?
 
Jokester said:
Hindsight.

It's a wonderful thing.

Edit: That and the signs are in the wrong place, plus how easy is it to get someone trained in animals at 3am?
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It isn't, however i'm suggesting that they should have been trained to deal with animals. Should be a given in a rural area with lots of farms and animals about.
 
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Jokester said:
What if in the meanwhile, someone swerved to avoid it running in the road and crashed and killed themselves.

Entirely reasonable to kill the animal if they weren't able to safely remove it from the road.
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Especially while trying to weigh up all alternative courses of action and likely outcomes, the guys had to make a terrible decision and acted, I'm sure, without malice.
 
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thebennyboy said:
It isn't, however i'm suggesting that they should have been trained to deal with animals. Should be a given in a rural area with lots of farms and animals about.
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I don't doubt that the police would have tried to call in a dog unit, most likely told the nearest one is an hour away. Ok so they radio in to have the motorway closed off, in the meantime whilst this is all going on, some poor family, a mother, a father and three children had to swerve around a dog that just darted onto the road, causing the car to do a number of flips instantly killing all 5 of them.

Yes hindsight is a wonderful thing.


I noticed in the article how the RSPCA have decided not to comment.

They've clearly understood that this was an unfortunate incident where there were little options.

If that wasn't the case the RSPCA are usually very vocal about these things.
 
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Nix said:
The police officer may have genuinely made a mistake but the use of force is then deemed non-proportionate so gets covered up by red tape to avoid embarrassment.
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Cover up a mistake by saying they deliberately hit the dog instead? Read the comments on the NWP Facebook page, if the aim was to save embarrassment it's evidently not gone too well.

thebennyboy said:
It isn't, however i'm suggesting that they should have been trained to deal with animals. Should be a given in a rural area with lots of farms and animals about.
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Be realistic, you can't train and equip all officers to deal with all possible eventualities.
 
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