Forgot my sarcasm tags again. I like snakes. I was mountain biking a few years ago and came across a little rattler (maybe 18" long) sunning on the trail. I scared him off the trail so that nobody else would hurt him.


I can only imagine how horrible the officer must feel, but he also needs to take responsibility for his actions. ANYONE who shoots should know exactly where their bullets are going to end up. Choosing to fire at a snake in a tree (hissing or not) was piss-poor judgement, and the officer should be criminally charged.

Scary when EricOKC and I are agreeing on something, eh?

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Hell, you're agreeing with me too, how horror-show!

__________________

THE GOVERNMENT HAS SENT ME

Snake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There was absolutely no reason for this officer to shoot at that snake. None. At all.

__________________
"Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first on my to-do list"
-Gnarls Barkley, "Going On" lyrics

Unless he wanted to actually kill the child or the father.

__________________
Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

The one thing in this whole article and discussion that strikes me is this.

No matter how careful you are, or how good you are at something you can never predict everything.

He was shooting up into a tree. The bullets went and unfortunately found a child.

Did the officer act rashly and beyond the scope of his duties? That is what the investigation will turn up. If he is found to have acted outside of his duties or rashly I would say prosecute him.

For some reason in this country people cannot accept accidents. When you drive down the road and your tire blows out causing a pileup and possible death the first thing people yell is the manufacturers fault and they want to sue. Accident happen. Things beyond your control cause problems, pain and sometimes death. To prejudge anyone is wrong and completely against our system of Innocent until proven guilty.

__________________
Listener of the Wilkow Majority
Patriot, Conservative, Libertarian

This isn't a tire blowing out. This is a purposeful act by a trained shooter. There's a significant difference.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

If you are a police officer trained in the use of a fire arm, you don't make these mistakes. It is not acceptable to just call it an accident.

If it were two civilians, maybe they would have some leeway, because they might not have had the extensive training that the officer did. But there is absolutely no excuse for this police officer.

__________________
"Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first on my to-do list"
-Gnarls Barkley, "Going On" lyrics

It was the folk who owned the house who insisted on the snake being removed by all accounts.

We don't actually know what snake it was or how dangerous it could have been yet.

Irrelevant. The police do not have to act on every homeowner's whim.

Irrelevant. Even if it had been a cobra, it was contained in the tree, and was not a clear and imminent danger to anyone.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Pulling the trigger on a handgun in this circumstance was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an accident. As anyone familiar with firearms will agree, it was pure negligence resulting in a tragic death. It's as simple as you always know where the bullet will go or you don't pull the trigger, a basic in firearms safety that any LE member would be familiar with.

Some asshole was shooting at a snake and accidently kills a kid. What a dumbfuck. He should go to jail for manslaughter.

They do have that whole public safety thing to worry about, if the snake was deemed a threat to the folk living in the house obviously they did have to act. Obviously the choice they made of how to do it is questionable.

Nonsense, the report said the snake was hissing at them and wasn't contained.

Shit, I'm not even a huge gun person (only shoot them at a range once every other year or so) and even I know what the deal is.

If I took the shot this officer did, my dad would've thrown me into a vat of acid (my dad being the one responsible for teaching me proper gun safety).

__________________
"Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first on my to-do list"
-Gnarls Barkley, "Going On" lyrics

They chose to deal with the 'dangerous' situation by making it way, way, way more dangerous. This would be like trying to get rid of a hornets nest using 10 tons of TNT.

And what about animal control? Don't they have ways of dealing with this? And seriously, why didn't they pepper spray the snake? Those spray cans have quite a bit of distance to them and there's a chance it would've disoriented the snake, allowing for capture. Why didn't they climb the tree and shake the branch? Why didn't they try and knock it out with a stick? If the answer was 'the snake was too high up', then it was even less of a threat!

Do you know how many uncontained, hissing snakes there are in nature? Lots.

__________________
"Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first on my to-do list"
-Gnarls Barkley, "Going On" lyrics

How, if they killed the snake the threat was gone....right?

Well like i've said we have no way of knowing whether they contacted animal control or not. Or if they radio'd it in or not.

Who's to say they didn't try it and it didn't work?

no my assumption is that they were afriad for their own lives if they deemed it to be that dangerous they had to shoot at it. I think they would have shot it as the kast resort no?

A tree on someone's property isn't exactly nature is it? Its not exactly miles away from people....