Ohio police officer who released police dog onto Black man with hands raised is fired
Circleville Police Officer Ryan Speakman "did not meet the standards and expectations we hold for our police officers," the police department said.
Asshole should be charged
Absolutely. Assault on an unarmed civilian, clear unnecessary use of force on video, over a stop for a mud flap.
Why didn’t the prosecutor charge him yet? The video isn’t enough evidence?
Presumably he was fired for forgetting to turn his camera off. Not for the action itself.
It's a PR move to try to limit fallout.
Full on criminal investigations take ages, so the firing comes now and by the time the prosecution gets round to criminal charges the police force can have distance themselves nicely in that time.
He'll be a new hire in a neighboring County in a couple of months.
This is a resume builder for a lot of cops
Exactly, it should be fired, charged, loss of required policing license if found guilty (or if a police license board decides so, even without conviction)
Currently I'll take just fired and charged, since we don't have policing licenses as of yet.
Which is really strange because clearly they’re a liability that will attract future lawsuits and misconduct. There’s a reason hospitals don’t hire doctors and nurses who got fired from other hospitals for bad behavior. But cops don’t pay out those lawsuits.
Costs will be paid by city or county taxpayers, as the case may be. So no financial pain will ever be felt by the department that hires a shit bag like this.
It may look like you're exaggerating to the casual observer, but as an Ohioan, this exact same scenario happened in my county and the county next to me. An officer handcuffed a mentally disabled woman and drug her down the stairs by her ankles, face down, and roughed her up a bit. He was fired from the Wayne County sheriff's dept and hired onto the Holmes County sheriff's dept the next week.
good. charge his ass. police shouldn't be able to break the law and get away with it
How can you justify releasing a damn dog on someone who ain't doing shit? These kids are more often than not from questionable origin, like a racist system or family, psychopaths, not meant to be the high water mark of justice, and the people they should actually be fucking with, either slip through the nets, or are running the show. Capitalist bootlickers is all it comes down to. I couldn't imagine wanting to be a cop.
When I get pulled over now, I'm always like "damn its a kid", knowing there are zero consequences for their actions, a push from on high to make arrests in any way possible, depending on who needs to get paid that day, doesn't make me feel any better.
I got pulled over last week...for having a dealership border around the license plate. Thats it. LOL. All pretense to see if he liked my face and clothes. I don't think police should be interacting with citizens in this manner, let alone releasing fkn dogs on unarmed people.
Apparently, from another article, it's policy
For context, this city is well outside Columbus and what you'd consider ruralish trashyish
Basically once you get an hour outside the big cities in Ohio it's not much different from the south
Well it's depressing that that's the explanation.
I will never understand why the US government is happy for large sections of its country to essentially operate as if it's the 18th century. It is like someone went back in time and gave them all tractors, and coke (both types) but otherwise they're just carrying on as per.
The moment a government agent chooses to violate someone's rights, they should be assumed to have resigned their position effective instantaneously.
Their actions from that point on are those of a private individual. Their previous status as a servant of the public is no matter; they abandoned that status the moment they forswore their oath of office.
A private individual commanded a dog to attack a harmless member of the public; and the dog obeyed that command and attacked that person.
The private individual is to be charged with a felony, and the dog is to be put down as a danger to humankind.
You had me right up until putting the dog down. I get what you're going for, but the dog was doing exactly what it was trained to do. That in of itself may be a problem, but putting the dog down only serves to add a level of moral and emotional ambiguity in most people's minds. In reality 100% of the blame, culpability, and punishment should land squarely on the officer.
You're right.
To the point the person you're responding to is trying to get at though -- the whole idea of a "police dog" is fucking insane in the first place.
The things police dogs are used for are things police shouldn't be doing, or are complete bullshit. "drug sniffing" is nonsense. Chasing down and attacking people is cruel on any level, either to the person being attacked, or it's cruelty in sending a dog to attack someone armed with various weapons. Either way, the dog shouldn't be part of the situation in the first place.
Yes, the person should be charged with a crime for what he did, but the dog was just following its training as a police dog. They're supposed to do what the handler tells them to do. It's not the dogs fault; it did exactly what it was supposed to do had the situation called for the dog to attack.
The fuck? I was good with everything until the end.
Now arrest them.
I like how this is considered politics and not crime.
A few days ago when this popped up, I saw a bunch of comments saying how everyone bets he gets a paid suspension at worst. I'm aware that officers are practically immune from the terrible things they do on the clock. I am at least glad all the commenters that thought no justice at all would happen were wrong.
The real question is does he lose his pension?
The tax payers demand to know.
Generally you do lose pension when fired from a police department.
The whole thing is fucking deplorable
Not good enough, not even close.
The use of police dogs should be outlawed
There is nothing wrong with police dogs. Officers assigned to handle the dogs can be problematic though, if they don’t have the discipline to put their prejudices aside.
My friend has a dog... good dog, very quiet and likes to play fetch with his toy. Growls and barks exclusively at black people. His owner is not racist. We think it is because a black guy accidentally stepped on his paw (resulting in no permanent harm) about 12 years ago.
Just saying, dogs can be racist as well.
There are plenty of things wrong with police dogs.
We shouldn’t be comfortable with dogs mauling suspects. No one would be okay with a police officer stopping a suspect by slicing their leg with a machete.
Being able to consistently and adequately issue a command to a police dog is a myth.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/10/15/mauled-when-police-dogs-are-weapons
I think the dogs leave too much room for fake ass probable cause. They should only be used for maybe bomb scare or smth. Having them deal with everyday citizens? In the current system police are just trying to make money off charges for their bosses. Get rid of the dogs for now. Maybe in the future we can have nice things.
Firing is not enough. These officers can still get employed by other police departments.
That's rare.
Not really... cops get fired all the time and then hired again at different places with no issues.
But because we have an intentionally broken system, that officer will wait a couple months, move two counties to the left and be rehired on another force (and likely promoted).
From cannon? No? Maybe some criminal charges then at least? No?
But did they fire the dog?
interesting bit of law regarding police dogs in Ohio --> https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2921.321