Police Shoot Into Home -- Accidental Discharge?

I've seen pages upon pages of back and forth discussion about AD vs. ND on these forums. It's a complete waste of time and effort. Negligence doesn't require an accident, and all accidents aren't a result of negligence.
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I agree with your first point -- it's not a discussion that 's really worth having again. Not so sure about a blanket statement that not all accidents aren't the result of "negligence"... (Unless a meteor falling out of the sky counts as an accident. :cool:)

For example, in the case of a car accident, insurance adjusters will always find someone at fault. They may assign fault to both parties, and even assign it 50/50. But someone is always at fault. If your brakes fail and you hit a tree, it's your fault if you didn't maintain them properly, and someone else's if the brake lines were cut. (Of course, in that case, your premium will probably go up anyway...:()

Calling the unintended discharge of a gun a "negligent" discharge is mostly a semantic reminder that safe gun handling is a serious responsibility, and that guns almost never go off by themselves. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but life is too short to get our knickers in a twist over debates about PC language.
 
Police Shoot Into Home -- Accidental Discharge?
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You know, if you are going to state that the police shot into a home because of the actions of a police dog depressing a trigger, then you have to go with this being a negligent discharge. After all, if the dog is THE police, then the dog, as a police officer, depressed the trigger and the gun fired and that would be a negligent discharge. The gun performed as designed and fired when the trigger was depressed.

If you want to go with no-fault, that being that the gun did not malfunction (accidental discharge) and that the dog is not responsible for the firing of the gun, then you could call it an unintentional discharge.

However, had the bullet struck a person, especially somebody other than an officer, the police would have been held accountable for allowing a police dog commanded to search for and apparently recover a gun that then discharged as a result of that process. Based on the description, the dog was pawing at the gun it had discovered, a taught behavior to show where the item is, which is an unsafe behavior for firearms.
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/...524/lawrence-police-dog-finds-and-shoots-gun/

This behavior of pawing at located items, digging in snow or debris is something you have probably seen on numerous cop-type shows where often you can hear the handle cop encouraging the dog with the words "Find it!" as the dog digs or paws at a location.

The military learned to teach their dogs to lay down when search for mines, as an alert that one had been found. Letting the dogs paw at the mines was not a successful behavior. Apparently, it isn't for guns either.

Check out this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auMihS1SOgQ

The dog is apparently trained to pick up the gun with its mouth and bring it back to the officer!

This dog, Gomo, has been trained much more appropriately. He lays down when he finds a gun. He doesn't paw at it, try to dig it up or out, and he doesn't carry it with his mouth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5duZwXynu90

So yeah, it is a negligent discharge if you have taught your search dog to paw at, dig up, uncover, or otherwise carry or manipulate firearms and the firearm discharges. That is just ridiculous. Dogs do NOT understand gun safety rules. Dogs should no more be allowed to attempt to touch or carry guns than toddlers.
 
So yeah, it is a negligent discharge if you have taught your search dog to paw at, dig up, uncover, or otherwise carry or manipulate firearms and the firearm discharges. That is just ridiculous. Dogs do NOT understand gun safety rules. Dogs should no more be allowed to attempt to touch or carry guns than toddlers.
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Agree, and the police will be liable for whatever damage the bullet caused. It's very fortunate no one was injured.
 
The military learned to teach their dogs to lay down when search for mines, as an alert that one had been found. Letting the dogs paw at the mines was not a successful behavior. Apparently, it isn't for guns either.
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That's because those dogs are trained to find mines.

Police dogs are trained to find drugs, people, ditched guns, and a whole host of evidence. I'm not saying that laying down, or pointing, or whatever when something is found isn't a bad idea, I'm just saying that military dogs and police dogs have different jobs.

Mine dogs are always looking for stuff that goes boom. Teaching them to paw at that is just plain stupid. Police dogs are more often going to be looking for ditched drugs and paraphernalia.

However, thinking about this situation, it does seem to make sense that a dog probably shouldn't ever paw or dig at something. Better to let the human do that. But, my point is, you really can't compare a mine/ied/explosive dog to a police dog. Two completely different jobs.

I would still say the negligence was on the stupid criminal who ditched a firearm in firing condition. If I buried a gun, loaded and ready to fire, and buried it, and 5 years later a dog, while digging it up it fired, and it struck someone, I would be liable, because I was the one who was negligent and left a firearm out, in a condition where this could happen.
 
Police dogs are trained to find drugs, people, ditched guns, and a whole host of evidence. I'm not saying that laying down, or pointing, or whatever when something is found isn't a bad idea, I'm just saying that military dogs and police dogs have different jobs.
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LOL, it doesn't matter if they have different jobs when their job is to find something. If that something is dangerous, be it mines or firearms, then the dog should not be handling it or trying to dig it out. As noted, they can be trained that way, regardless of what the target it.
 
LOL, it doesn't matter if they have different jobs when their job is to find something. If that something is dangerous, be it mines or firearms, then the dog should not be handling it or trying to dig it out. As noted, they can be trained that way, regardless of what the target it.
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Dude, I agreed with you. Did you not read my post? I said police dogs should be trained to not paw at stuff they found. My point was that you can't compare a police dog with a military dog. Two totally different purposes for an animal. It would be like comparing a shotgun to a handgun. They serve different purposes, even though their function is similar. Police dogs and military dogs are functionally (as in, physiologically, and biologically) the same thing, but they are used for completely different purposes.

Maybe this case will get Police departments to change the training of their dogs. Of course, there could be a good reason a police dogs paws or digs. I don't know, honestly.
 
An accident infers that there is no blame to be placed.
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This is a false statement. An accident is when an unplanned event happens. In every case there could have been something different done that would have prevened it. Unless the person deliberately pulled the trigger it is still a accident. And that in no way removes the responsibility of the person handling a gun when it accidently fires. Negligence is a much higher level of responsibility

Before anything can rise to the level of negligence the person responsible had to be doing something that led up to the accident that a reasonable person would have known to be dangerous. Such as using a gun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

We see this in traffic accidents all the time. People who cause accidents are still responsible for the damage or injuries to other parties. But you rarely see an accident where a driver is charged with negligence. Why should gun accidents be any different

Quite often things happen that are unforseen and that no reasonable person could have anticipated.

I would STRONGLY suggest that some people understand the definition of negligence and stop throwing that term around at every inintentional discharge. Over time common useage of words actually changes the meaning of the words. Very few firearms accidents rise to the legal definition of negligence.

By using the term negligence in the way SOME do, you are inferring that the very act of owning a gun is something a reasonable person would consider dangerous. That implies that gun ownership is a negligent act.
 
Such as using a gun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
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Or having the finger on the trigger when you weren't prepared to fire?

Guns don't fire themselves. They require the trigger to be pulled. If a gun "just went off" it's because you were negligent in your handling. Perhaps I was wrong with what the term accident really is. But finding a true, non-negligent accident when a firearm goes off unintentionally is like finding a needle in a haystack. Sure, the needle is there somewhere, but it's surrounded by millions of times more hay.

By using the term negligence in the way SOME do, you are inferring that the very act of owning a gun is something a reasonable person would consider dangerous. That implies that gun ownership is a negligent act.
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Huh? That's a non-sequitur. Your logic simply doesn't follow. Owning a firearm is not negligent. It's an inanimate object. The negligence comes with how the firearm is handled. If you break any of the 4 rules of safe firearm handling, in most circumstances you are negligent. I just don't see your logic. Negligence isn't in ownership, no one has said that, or even come close to implying that. Negligence is in handling.

Very few firearms accidents rise to the legal definition of negligence.
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I would highly disagree here. Most of the time, no one is hurt by an unintentional discharge. These would never get to court anyway, as the damages are so minimal to not being worth it to pursue, so I suppose you're right in that, legally, it's not negligent. But as soon as someone is hurt because someone broke a couple of common sense rules, it shows negligence. And except in a few rare cases, the law will side with the injured...
 
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Before this spirals too out of control, please allow me to explain why I believe most unintentional shots fired fall under the category, negligent.

First of all, please spare me the comparisons to car accidents. Most car accidents require an act of negligence on either one party or the other. However, insurance companies, who are trying to keep their costs down have no interest in labelling their client as being "negligent." The term simply isn't used, until someone is hurt or killed, then you'll likely hear the word a lot from the prosecutor during the trial.

Speeding 20mph over the limit? Negligence
Driving drunk? Negligence
Weaving in and out of traffic? Negligence

Yet every single one of these will be labelled an accident if something were to happen.

To quote Stan Lee (and before him FDR, and before him, Voltaire, and before him, Jesus in Luke 12:48), "With great power comes great responsibility." Guns are very powerful, and although I would argue they are inherently, by themselves, not dangerous, they, along with an operator have the power to do great harm. As a firearm owner, we must be held to a much higher standard when we are handling our firearms. If my 3 year old daughter spills her milk at the dinner table, we could say she was being negligent (wasn't paying attention, was playing, etc), but that spill, except in extraordinarily unlikely circumstances has very little chance of hurting someone. I think we can rightly say it was "just an accident."

When a firearm goes off unintentionally, especially when that fired round has the potential to do so much damage, we cannot just right it off as "just an accident." We have 4 simple rules to follow. I would argue that if all 4 rules are followed all the time, there would be statistically 0 unintentional discharges, not counting freak accidents (like the 1911 in the MRI suite I linked a couple times in the last week or two), or mechanical failures (such as the well know Remington Model 700 problem...that actually still exists...). So 4 basic rules to follow, to prevent catastrophe.

Almost all "accidents" occur when one or more of those rules are broken...specifically #3. Do you agree that these are simple rules to follow? Cars have more kintetic energy, and more possibility of death or serious injury, yet, there are dozens, if not hundreds of rules that must be followed in a car. Four rules is not a difficult thing to remember. With the amount of care and responsibility that it takes to handle a firearm, breaking any one of these rules is negligent.

I will admit, this is mostly a semantic battle. I don't like the word accident, when there is fault, because it allows the negligent person to claim, "Oh, it was just an accident," and brush it off like it's no big deal. I use the term negligence because it conveys how serious the situation really is, and how lucky the person is, if no one got hurt. Luckily for us, most "accidents" do not result in death or injury, except to ones ego. But the difference between accident and negligence shouldn't be whether someone was hurt or not.

Anyway, that's my feeling on this, and I will bow out before I get this thread even more off track.
 
Good grief guys this is life and unintended things happen all the time. Do we really need to apply blame to everything and then quibble about how many angels can dance on the end of a 22 short?
 
Imagine the dogs surprise!
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Yup, and it will take plenty of range time to overcome that resulting bad flinch. The range staff may have to use the old trick of burying an unloaded gun to see if Officer Mutt has a flinch. If he jerks as the trigger is pulled....

Bart Noir
 
Do we really need to apply blame to everything and then quibble about how many angels can dance on the end of a 22 short?
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Which end of that 22 short? Because one end is... :D

So true tho... Life is too short to be reading the hair-spliting "I'm right your wrong" essays.
As with most forums, the more you type the less we read.
 
IMHO

The negligence was in using a dog to start with. The handler knew, or should have known, that the dog would dig when searching for the gun. The handler knew, or should have known, that the gun was loaded (Safety Rule #1). The handler knew, or should have known, that the gun was ready to fire (Safety Rule #1, axiom #1 - the gun is in firing condition).

So, the prudent thing would have been to call for a metal detector to scan the snow bank rather than having the dog dig. Doesn't the police force have a metal detector available?
 
Eventually someone would have to dig for it unless they wanted to wait for the snow to melt. I don't see what the big deal is here. A freak accident occured, in which no one was injured, and probably couldn't be recreated if they tried a million zillion times.
 
A million zillion is a lot especially given that hunters manage to be shot by their dogs at least once every other year, usually by pawing or stepping on the firearms.
 
This is a false statement. An accident is when an unplanned event happens. In every case there could have been something different done that would have prevened it. Unless the person deliberately pulled the trigger it is still a accident. And that in no way removes the responsibility of the person handling a gun when it accidently fires. Negligence is a much higher level of responsibility

Before anything can rise to the level of negligence the person responsible had to be doing something that led up to the accident that a reasonable person would have known to be dangerous. Such as using a gun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

We see this in traffic accidents all the time. People who cause accidents are still responsible for the damage or injuries to other parties. But you rarely see an accident where a driver is charged with negligence. Why should gun accidents be any different

Quite often things happen that are unforseen and that no reasonable person could have anticipated.

I would STRONGLY suggest that some people understand the definition of negligence and stop throwing that term around at every inintentional discharge. Over time common useage of words actually changes the meaning of the words. Very few firearms accidents rise to the legal definition of negligence.

By using the term negligence in the way SOME do, you are inferring that the very act of owning a gun is something a reasonable person would consider dangerous. That implies that gun ownership is a negligent act.
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Very well stated sir.
 
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