Reason:

The City of Detroit will pay out $60,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit by a woman who says police wantonly shot and killed her three dogs during a marijuana raid three years ago.

The plaintiff, Nikita Smith, claimed in a 2016 lawsuit that officers from Detroit’s Major Violators Unit acted as a “dog death squad” when they executed a narcotics search warrant on her house for a suspected marijuana offense, shooting three of her pit bulls, including one that was behind a closed bathroom door. Extremely graphic photos entered into evidence in the case show bullet holes riddling the outside of the door and the dog dead inside the bathroom.

I covered this but the photos are so gruesome, offensive and disgusting that I don’t even want to link my piece.

Smith was arrested for marijuana possession, but the charges were later dropped when officers failed to appear in court.

The settlement is the latest in a string of costly payouts for Detroit due to dog shootings during drug raids. It also set new precedent in Fourth Amendment law. Detroit tried to argue that, since Smith’s dogs were unlicensed, in violation of Detroit’s municipal code, she had no legitimate property interest in them under the Fourth Amendment. The court rejected this argument.

Smith’s attorney, Chris Olson, calls the decision “a milestone in police-dog shooting cases that continue to plague the United States.

“The decision was significant because it denies police a ‘get out of jail free card’ if the deceased dog is later discovered to have been unlicensed,” he continues. “The decision is especially significant because the vast majority of dogs are unlicensed. The upshot is that the Fourth Amendment prohibits police officers from shooting dogs where the shooting is more intrusive than necessary, and citizens do not have to pay a dog license fee to enjoy their Fourth Amendment rights.”

A 2016 Reason investigation found that the department’s Major Violators Unit, which conducts drug raids across the city, has a nasty habit of leaving dead dogs in its wake and generating civil rights lawsuits. A follow-up investigation found that Detroit police shot 54 dogs in 2017, twice as many as Chicago.

Last year, Detroit paid $225,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Kenneth Savage and Ashley Franklin, who claimed Detroit police officers shot their three dogs while the animals were enclosed behind an 8-foot-tall fence—all so the officers could confiscate several potted marijuana plants in the backyard.

In 2015, the city approved a $100,000 settlement to a man after police shot his dog while it was securely chained to a fence.

One officer involved in the Smith raid has shot 80 dogs over the course of his career, according to “destruction of animal” reports filed by Detroit police officers in 2017 and obtained by Reason. Two other officers involved in the Smith raid testified in depositions that they had shot “fewer than 20” and “at least 19” dogs over the course of their careers.

Bah.  What’s a few thousand here and there when the tax-payers have to foot the bill?  Now if they were to have charged them with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to do harm, animal cruelty and trespassing, and thrown them in prison, we may be getting somewhere.

Here’s another note for you.  I don’t believe in your “war on drugs.”  Not even a little bit.  I consider your raids to be criminal home invasion, and I don’t consider you to be “heroes of the community” when you do things like that.