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How the Law Rationalizes the Police Killing of “Dangerous Dogs”

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How the Law Rationalizes the Police Killing of “Dangerous Dogs” University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2021 The “Puppycide” of Policing: How the Law Rationalizes the Police Killing of “Dangerous Dogs” Jeremy Smith [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Criminology Commons Recommended Citation Smith, Jeremy, "The “Puppycide” of Policing: How the Law Rationalizes the Police Killing of “Dangerous Dogs”. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2021. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/6708 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jeremy Smith entitled "The “Puppycide” of Policing: How the Law Rationalizes the Police Killing of “Dangerous Dogs”." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Sociology. Dr. Tyler Wall, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Drs. Lois Presser, Michelle Brown, Harry Dahms, and Derek Alderman Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) The “Puppycide” of Policing: How the Law Rationalizes the Police Killing of “Dangerous Dogs” A Dissertation Presented for the Doctorate of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jeremy J. Smith May 2021 Copyright © 2021 by Jeremy Jason Smith All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I want to thank God for everything he has done for me and the blessings he has bestowed upon me. These blessings include the greatest mom and dad I have known, my wonderful brother, a great sister-in-law, and two beautiful nieces. Also, I am blessed by him bringing to the animal welfare profession so many years ago, for bringing me to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and for crossing my paths with Dr. Tyler Wall whose tireless effort and hard work helped bring me to this point. I also want to thank my committee members Drs. Lois Presser, Michelle Brown, Harry Dahms, and Derek Alderman for wonderful insights and also for their help during my journey towards a doctorate. I would also like to thank the other faculty of the sociology department whose encouragement and understanding means more to me than they will ever know. I would like to give a special thank you to Bethany Nelson, Joshua Hughes, Michael Garret, Richard Davis, Amber Davis, Maggie Walton, Cory Banks, Jennifer Moore, Hannah Greene, Angel Blackwell, Jessica Blevins, Cannon and Ziggy, the animal control officers who worked at the Washington County/Johnson City Animal Center in 2008, and all my family and friends at Nirvana Comics and at the Young-Williams Animal Center. An acknowledgement section would not be complete unless I gave a thank you to Suzanne Keck, Shonda Willis, and Justin Owens. Finally, I would like to thank my dog Midnight who was a great friend and confidant, as well as an inspiration for this dissertation. Love you and miss you. iii ABSTRACT Police officers kill approximately 10,000 dogs every year in the United States, according to an estimate by a Department of Justice official. This amounts to police officers killing approximately 25 to 30 dogs every day. Although it is difficult to ascertain the actual extent of the problem since many law enforcement agencies do not keep track of canine shootings by their officers, the number of dogs killed by police during these encounters has government officials declaring that an “epidemic” is occurring within policing itself. The degree to which dogs die at the hands of police have led some commentators to refer to this trend as “puppycide” or “canicide.” The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how U.S. law rationalizes canicide, or the police killing of dogs. A key focus of this dissertation, then, is how the judiciary’s construction of “dangerous dogs” coalesces with justifications and rationalizations of canicide. To do this, this dissertation provides a sociolegal analysis and ethnographic content analysis of federal court cases and legal decisions on canicide, with a specific focus on the most important case to date, Brown v. Battle Creek Police Department. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One Introduction ...................................................................................... 1 Police Violence and Canicide .......................................................................... 10 Chapter Two Methodology .................................................................................. 17 Ethnographic Content Analysis Process ......................................................... 22 Data ................................................................................................................. 23 Data Collection ................................................................................................ 25 Data Analysis .................................................................................................. 26 Chapter Three Violence and the Police .............................................................. 35 Violence and the Police ................................................................................... 37 Governing Violence ......................................................................................... 45 Violoence and the Police-Citizen Encounter ................................................... 52 Chapter Four Brown v Battle Creek Police Department ...................................... 60 Overview ......................................................................................................... 61 Officer Safety................................................................................................... 65 Imminent Danger ............................................................................................. 75 Authorized Narrators ....................................................................................... 81 Non-Submission and Officer Safety ................................................................ 86 Chapter Five Findings 1: Police Violence and the Dangerous Dog .................... 93 The Dangerous Dog and Police Violence ........................................................ 95 The Bite ......................................................................................................... 103 Folk Devils and the Pit Bull ............................................................................ 107 The Pit Bull Effect .......................................................................................... 112 The Social Killing of the Dangerous Dog ....................................................... 118 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 122 Chapter Six Findings 2: The Fourth Amendment Labyrinth .............................. 125 The Gateway ................................................................................................. 131 The Fourth Amendment’s Minotaur ............................................................... 138 The Labyrinth ................................................................................................ 145 The Exclusionary Fourth Amendment ........................................................... 151 The Goring .................................................................................................... 162 Chapter Seven Conclusion ............................................................................... 165 Weaponizing the Dog .................................................................................... 173 Weaponized Pets .......................................................................................... 180 Curs, Criminals, and Culling .......................................................................... 185 Future Directions ........................................................................................... 190 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 193 References ....................................................................................................... 198 Vita .................................................................................................................... 239 v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Police officers kill approximately 10,000 dogs every year in the United States, according to an estimate by a Department of Justice official (Griffith, 2014, para. 13; see also Scott, 2016). This amounts to police officers killing approximately 25 to 30 dogs every day (Griffith, 2014). Although it is difficult to ascertain the actual extent of the problem since many law enforcement agencies do not keep track of canine shootings by their officers (Whitehead, 2017), the number of dogs killed by police during these encounters has government officials declaring that an “epidemic” is occurring within policing itself (Griffith, 2014). The degree to which dogs die at the hands of police
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