Police Power and Dogs

This line of stories that Radley Balko has covered somehow manages to hit my outrage button every time there's a new addition. I know it makes no sense, but there's just something about an innocent dog getting killed because the cops went to the wrong house that shocks the conscience. Don't get me wrong- killed and wounded children and other innocents are even more disturbing, but the cops seem to use restraint a bit more frequently there. Poor Fido, on the other hand, just needs to have a natural, instinctive reaction to a stranger and suddenly he becomes a threat that needs to be taken out.

I don't know, maybe it's just the visual, or maybe it's just the fact that I own a dog, but how these stories- which are all too frequent- don't get us to re-think the drug war is beyond me.