Roommates who sued a Maryland county Monday claim police officers illegally entered their apartment without a warrant, detained them at gunpoint without justification and unnecessarily shot their pet dog, which was left paralyzed and ultimately euthanized.
The dog, a boxer mix named Hennessey, did not attack the three officers who entered the apartment before two of them shot the animal with their firearms and the third fired a stun gun at it, according to the federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks at least $16 million in damages over the June 2, 2021 encounter, which started with Prince George’s County police officers responding to a report of a dog bite at an apartment complex where the four plaintiffs lived. What happened next was captured on police body camera video and video from a plaintiff’s cellphone.
These people did nothing wrong and were accosted by armed thugs in their own home. The dog did nothing wrong and was murdered. The taxpayers did nothing wrong and will pay out tons of money to these people. The police, who did everything wrong, will face no repercussions for their actions because qualified immunity dictates that they didn’t necessarily know that holding innocent people at gunpoint violates their rights.
When police break the law, they should be tried on a matter of whether or not the taxpayers are responsible for what occurred.
People like this should never get our tax dollars spent on their well-being.
We should be way more angry about this than we are.
that would be a hell of a start
A lot of time, effort and money is spent convincing people that the police and their abuse are things that only happens to those people.