You've probably seen this story: South Carolina family travels through Tennessee on the way home on New Year's Day. Father leaves wallet on top of car after refueling; people see wallet fly off and call police. Police, always expecting the worst, think the car is carjacked and that the robbers have thrown identification away. They pull the car over and handcuff the family. Family tells police officer repeatedly to close car doors so dogs don't get out, officer ignores Obvious Handcuffed Scum Pretending To Be Family. Dog gets out and starts playing on the highway, and at one point scampers towards the officer, who then shoots it in the head with a shotgun in full view of the family, without provocation.

The police, for their part, have been pretending all along that the incident "couldn't have been avoided" and "regret" that the dog died. Let's explore what could have been done differently:

• The officer could have listened to the family and closed the door of the car to keep the dogs in.
• If the officer thought the dogs were a danger to him, he definitely should have closed the car door to keep them contained.
• If the officer wanted to search the car, he should have called animal control for the dogs and then searched the car.
• If he didn't want to search the car, he didn't need to worry about keeping the dogs in it.
• If he didn't think the dogs were a threat (so he didn't close the door), he definitely didn't need to shoot one of them.

In short, he should have closed the car door. There's no excuse for anything else that happened because he let the dog out without reason.

Police officers have a tough job, but let me point out that if any other individual in the country ignored a warning to close a car door and shot and killed a scampering dog, he would be facing at least a year in jail. You can argue, if you want, that police should be immune for committing some crimes in the line of duty, but at the very least, this officer has disqualified himself from law enforcement. If he's not dismissed, what does that tell you about the government's committment to a police force that is above reproach?