Officers must respect all life
Acity police officer in Lethbridge on Jan. 5 apparently came upon a young deer lying injured on the road whereupon he decided to terminate her life, not humanely, and this is truly astonishing, but by running his truck over her several times until she was dead.
This is all on video, as is often the case in today’s world. What should we to make of this kind of behaviour? Let’s start with the video exposure. We can consider that two ways, but I accept only one as legitimate.
I am not going to condemn the video. Video exposure today is a reality, and while some people are angry and disgusted at the brazenness of people taking and releasing video to the public, and would censor it or somehow prevent it, I’d rather people looked at this kind of exposure as a window opening on behaviour that is, and in some cases has always been, far more common than citizens and society were routinely aware of before video came upon the scene.
We all have the option of not watching this video. I haven’t. For many people, just knowing of and reading about the event is sufficient to make judgment about its place in their world.
Truly offensive, disgusting behavior by people, including those in positions of authority, reflecting intent, malice or extremely poor judgment, have been and are an almost every day occurrence in our world; only now are observers and citizens seeing and getting a sense of the extent and kind of behaviour that is far too common for us to claim, in a blanket fashion, that we have a inherently educated, disciplined society. We can only imagine where we’d be as a human society if we did not have the constraints and guidelines that our existing social and legal structure provide. The latter may not presently be adequate, but no matter how well they might be written or enforced, we will still see these kinds of events.
There is a much greater problem with the officer’s behavior than there is with the video issue. If he was unable to realize how mind-numbingly dumb this was, that in itself would warrant condemnation. He was most likely armed – another option, although perhaps limited by circumstance – and police often deal with animals and have regular contact with conservation officers. Another choice!
If this person avoided these professional options because of an aversion to paperwork, or accountability (you used your weapon?), irresponsible behaviour and poor judgment again are on the table.
Another issue is it’s disturbing. It’s one thing to have an accident and hit a wild or domestic animal but it is an entirely different realm of behaviour to deliberately inflict cruelty on an animal.
It is possible the officer thought, given the circumstance, he was alleviating suffering and pain by driving over the animal. That is deciding the end justifies the means. Wrong call; that’s not acceptable in today’s world. That’s like saying it’s OK to cheat because you end up winning, or it’s OK to lie because you might escape accountability! By degree, this still demonstrates poor judgment and detachment from respect and value for an animal’s life.
Another ominous and dark undertone to this issue is the well-established link between abuse and cruelty to animals and like behaviour toward humans. These kinds of issues should be part of any formal investigation.
The order in which a trained person, or for that matter any thinking, schooled and disciplined person, makes decisions and takes action are consequential. This combination of qualities is not always or even commonly present, but in our law enforcement and legal system it should be.
It starts with the basic framework of respecting a life (animal and human), recognizing cruelty and pain are not to be deliberately inflicted, and reflecting this human and humane quality in decision making and action.
These are attributes that often have to be taught but society has the right to demand them, and expect delivery of them, from our public services.
Dr. Brian L. Horejsi is a wildlife and forest ecologist. He writes about environmental affairs, public resource management and governance and their entrenched legal and social bias.