Give these guys powerful weapons and armored vehicles and kevlar and body armor, and they are going to want to use it. And so they do:
WISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn.
“It was like a SWAT team,” shelter employee Ray Schulze said.
Two weeks ago, Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant.
“(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth,” Schulze said.
The focus of their search was a baby fawn brought there by an Illinois family worried she had been abandoned by her mother.
“When it made a little noise, it sounded like it was laughing,” Schulze said.
***“I said the deer is scheduled to go to the wildlife reserve the next day,” Schulze said.
It was to go to a wildlife reserve in Illinois that allows the rehabilitation of deer. Schulze said agents corralled workers near the picnic area and then set out in search of the fawn.
“I was thinking in my mind they were going to take the deer and take it to a wildlife shelter, and here they come carrying the baby deer over their shoulder. She was in a body bag,” Schulze said. “I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘That’s our policy,’ and I said, ‘That’s one hell of a policy.'”
We’re a very sick society. But hey, let’s keep giving the police more weapons and more authority. What could go wrong?
(via the Great Orange Satan)
Napoleon
For what it is worth, it is my understanding that when you come upon a real young fawn and you do not see its mother, leave it because mom will be coming back. They don’t have working sweat glands so potential preditors can not smell them so it is safe for mom to leave them alone while she looks for food.
I have done that in the past in my back yard and mom has eventually always come back.
Lawrence
I read one of these stories every day. We need a federal task force to investigate police overreach and abuse of power.
Violet
To be fair, the fawn might have been an armed terrorist. Fawn Qaeda.
MoeLarryAndJesus
This country has a serious bacon problem.
SteveinSC
The only way to stop a bad fawn with a gun is a good fawn with a gun. I think I’ll go and rub my pistol some more, I need a cigarette.
Keith P.
@Lawrence: It’s not like we don’t have an actual war these people can actually sign up for. Damn, I know folks like to play dress-up and all, but they’ve got options ranging from playing video games where you pretend to be super-soldiers all the way to signing up to be actual super-soldiers, but instead they decide to turn domestic law enforcement into this.
cleek
FREEDOM, LIBTARDS!
RSR
oh, FFS!
Carl Nyberg
I’m ok with killing deer to keep the population down. I’m ok with killing deer to stem the spread of infectious diseases. I’m ok with killing deer because they are a nuisance in certain areas.
I’m not a hunter. I am connected enough to the ecology movement that I see deer as mostly a problem to be managed.
But there’s nothing that seems a legit reason to kill this deer.
The law being violated is possession of a wild animal. OK. Write a ticket and take the matter to court.
I don’t see the public policy purpose fulfilled by getting a warrant and having a bunch of guys with guns go onto private property and kill a fawn.
shell
What the fucking fuck??
BlueSkies
The comments at the news site are — weird. And sad. For those on the left, this episode is another example of over-reach of authoritarian police-like organizations (the DNR in this case). It’s appreciated that the animal shelter is staffed by normal people, mainly retired animal lovers.
For those on the right, it’s a combination of Ruby Ridge and Waco all over again.
muddy
Probably they just wanted a little snack for later.
Botsplainer
The DNR guys reacted like dicks, BUT as someone who has collided with deer while driving, sees deer in the yard practically daily, and has buried several large fawn parts that coyotes leave behind, I can say that there is an overabundance of rats with hooves.
nastybrutishntall
They needed to kill the fawn to save it.
Violet
@Botsplainer: Too many deer, not enough wolves.
LAC
Even sadder reading the story – congrats, Wisconsin – ughh!
Lolly
@Carl Nyberg:
The really odd thing is that I would assume the laws against keeping wildlife are there, at least in part, for the protection of the wildlife. We don’t want people bringing animals that should be roaming free into their homes.
So it would seem that they killed this fawn–to save it?
raven
@Botsplainer: Look at the pic I posted in response to yours.
raven
The Yearling.
SteveinSC
I saw the facebook page, but it didn’t have enough of that little je ne sais quoi so I sent them an email that did.
celticdragonchick
They didn’t have enough chained-in-the-yard dogs to shoot that day…so the fawn had step in to make up the shortage.
LittlePig
The fawn had the temerity to LAUGH AT THE PO-PO! This Is Not Done.
Seriously, this sounds like some asshole was pissed at the vicious creature, or somebody at the shelter, or his wife, or hell he just mighta felt like he hadn’t killed enough stuff lately.
The Great White Butthurt continues apace.
Comrade Misfit
13 armed cops to confiscate a fawn from an animal shelter?
Were the doughnut shops within an hour’s drive all closed that day?
What do they do if they have to take down a meth lab in Wisconsin, call up the National Guard?
LittlePig
@raven: Very well-played.
Trollhattan
That is some sick shit, right there. Shameful.
Comrade Misfit
@BlueSkies:
I’ve found that for the sake of one’s own sanity, comments on news sites are best left unread.
Kristine Smith
That’s the shelter where I got the late lamented Mickey.
Jeez.
celticdragonchick
From one of the comments:
Same sort of thing was happening in Boston right after the bombing. Cops with ‘Sheen gunz getting really, really itchy to find some soft flesh to tear up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LrbsUVSVl8
West of the Cascades
Imagine you’re a deer. You’re prancing along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook, you put your little deer lips down to the cool clear water… BAM! A fuckin’ bullet rips off part of your head! Your brains are laying on the ground in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son of a bitch who shot you was wearing?
— My Cousin Vinny
ETA – not to make light of this story. The official who compared this “operation” to a drug bust to justify not making a phone call should be fired, but instead will likely get a promotion.
fidelio
Maybe Wisconsin DNR should worry a little more about the rent-a-cops with guns in the woods instead of deer in shelters.
Tone in DC
@LittlePig:
LULz.
Glenn Beck will be on soon telling his audience how DEERANGED (much worse than just deranged, you could tell from the laughing and the whole baby deer thing) and EVIL that animal was. He’ll have the board, non-permanent markers and everything.
Trollhattan
@Comrade Misfit:
I swear this is some kind of universal truth. The local dead paper’s commenters can take ANY story and turn it into an opening. Story about cute little kids with lemonade stand? Time for “That’s just great, until Nancy Pelosi’s UNION THUGS find out for force them out of business!”
Tone in DC
@Comrade Misfit:
They go in with SEAL Team Six. And with extreme prejudice.
Ruckus
I believe that I have just lost the ability to be surprised at what armed men with badges will do.
piratedan
they were concerned that the deer might have been armed and willing to use a SYG defense……
Botsplainer
@raven:
I did – he’s a good looking pooch!
Bobby Thomson
Fuckin’ rent a cops. For all the bitching about big city police departments, some of those assholes in the sticks with something to prove are even scarier.
Amir Khalid
Another day and that baby fawn would have been safe at a licenced wildlife shelter. Does the state policy actually forbid the Department of Natural Resources to wait that one day?
Seanly
@Lawrence:
Who swats the SWAT team?
raven
@LittlePig: I was really distressed to read that Marjorie Rawling’s swiped all of her cook’s recipes and gave her no credit in the Cross Creek Cookbook. I don’t know what I expected, more I guess.
zombie rotten mcdonald
well, Scott Walker is having singers arrested in the Capitol, so pants-wetting terror at harmless things seems to be the order of the day in Wisconsin Public Servants these days.
Christine
It’s always interesting to me that any animals that manage to survive and thrive alongside humans (such as squirrels, pigeons, or deer) are considered by many people to be vermin that should be extinguished. I’m not talking about managing populations, which is needed, but the hate directed towards them as “rats with wings”, etc. The only animal that can inspire that kind of dismissive disgust in me are human beings – so many of them, and so dirty and destructive….
celticdragonchick
@Trollhattan:
I stay far, far away from Yahoo News for that reason. The idiots in there make the Civil War era fire eaters seem positively sedate.
Gindy51
The only reason to euthanize the deer is if it was found in an area that has a lot of chronic wasting disease. Seems WI has a lot of it:
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/06/12144/chronic-wasting-disease-rise-wisconsin-deer-will-it-infect-humans
I’ve seen what this shit can do and it is NOT pretty. The only reliable tests they have are on dead deer tissue, live testing is not 100% and those who are in the early stages of the disease (like this fawn might have been) will not show any prion cells.
That said, the DNR in WI sucks ass.
I hope who ever called in and reported the fawn to them feels like a sack of week old dog shit.
Walker
The only thing I have heard that remotely justifies this (and not even sure this is enough) is that there are concerns about a massive increase in chronic wasting disease among deer in Wisconsin.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Nice theory, but the deer have invaded the suburbs and even urban areas where A) wolves are unlikely to be willing to go and B) residents will demand wolves be eradicated to protect their children and pets. The only practical predator to deal with city deer are bow hunters.
celticdragonchick
@Amir Khalid:
Not when you have already dispatched armed men with badges with orders to hold the employees at gunpoint.
When you let these kinds of things start, they simply will not stop just because of notions like logic, empathy or basic fucking decency.
dance around in your bones
Jesus fuck – the SWAT team killed Bambi? I was traumatized enough when Disney killed Bambi’s mom.
@raven:
I cried over that book several times in my yout. Sofa King Sad.
celticdragonchick
@Gindy51:
The person who called the fawn in acted out of kindness, however misplaced. That person is NOT responsible for the actions that happened subsequently. The men with guns and badges have to take responsibility for what they did. Nobody else can be on the hook for that.
Paul in KY
@Carl Nyberg: I don’t think they killed it, did they?! I thought they just loaded it into a sack, like I have seen done with other wild animals.
Why the fucking fuck would you kill a fawn that you are here to confiscate (provided it wasn’t ‘coming right at them’)?!?!?
Violet
@Amir Khalid:
This isn’t a woman wanting an abortion. Of course they don’t have to wait.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
No, it will be about how they got shut down by the health inspector. This actually happens once in a while, and it’s like wingnut catnip about government overreach ETA: and job killing regulations. I’ve reluctantly concluded that we really shouldn’t make an exception for kids selling lemonade; they ought to have to follow the same rules as any other food vendor.
raven
@dance around in your bones: In this scene from Cross Creek Rip Torn either commits suicide by cop or was handing the gun over. He was despondent after killing the yearling. He told her they could not be pets.
Rosalita
@Christine:
This. I volunteer at an animal shelter. Makes me more disgusted in humans every day.
NotMax
“What did you do today, Daddy?”
“I killed Bambi.”
El Caganer
Hey, at least they didn’t call in a drone strike.
raven
@NotMax: And the deer that some moron brought to Maui that cause such damage? Of course there is also the awful eucalyptus sucking it dry!
raven
@El Caganer: An unmanned aerial vehicle providing surveillance from high in the sky helped Columbus State University police make an arrest in a bicycle theft case last week.
Read more here: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2013/08/01/2612984/columbus-state-universitys-new.html#storylink=cpy
NotMax
@raven
Axis deer. The jokes write themselves.
Don’t forget about the mongooses. Talk about a royal-class snafu.
dance around in your bones
@raven: My browser couldn’t play that clip for whatever reason, but I remember well the tension in the book between Jody wanting to keep Flag as a pet and the very real problem of the yearling eating up all the family’s corn.
I just cried like hell.
raven
@NotMax: The peoples are revolting!
raven
@dance around in your bones: Have you seen the film? I really enjoyed it, it’s a compendium of Cross Creek, the Yearling and Jacobs Ladder.
NotMax
@raven
It’s Florida, but before Stand Your Ground, so Flag couldn’t shoot back.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Kind of puts it backwards, at least so far as California is concerned. Total deer population is down, in first part because of habitit loss and secondly, from poaching. As we push farther into range and woodlands in search of that “rural” living experience there are going to be more, not fewer encounters despiite the overall decline in population. A friend was a Nevada County planner and would field calls from residents of a particular development to “Please come and remove these deer, they’re destroying my garden!” Of course the fine ladies wanted them to be caught and led off, not ventilated.
As it turns out, the NC planning commission had been advised the proposed subdivision was in one of the state’s major deer migration routes and the planners had suggested this was not a great place to build homes. You can guess how that was resolved.
Soonergrunt
Sometimes all you can do is shake your head.
Because trying to dial back the militarization of the nation’s local police forces is going to be like trying to hold back the tide.
Svensker
@celticdragonchick:
Yeah, but at least Boston there were bombs and dead people and really scary. This, there were some animal lovers and a baby deer? I’m not seeing a real comparison.
Omnes Omnibus
It was an Illinois deer. So fuck that FIB anyway.
Seriously though, concerns about chronic wasting disease have left DNR agents with little discretion. OTOH showing up in SWAT gear is dumb.
raven
@dance around in your bones: I think Flag ate the neighbors garden. That was the breaking point but he was so distraught about his daughter’s (I think in the movie “The Yearling” they made the child a boy) heartbreak that he got drunk and forced the sheriff to shoot him.
srv
God Bless America
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
Yeah, we’re really fucking up the environment something fierce. Here in Southern California, we have regular problems with black bears coming down into foothill neighborhoods; they’re famous as the California bears that like swimming pools and hot tubs. The scary thing is that there weren’t any black bears in the area until around the 1930s; they only moved in after we extirpated the brown bear population- the state animal, no less! We’ve also been colonized by flocks of feral parrots and other members of the parrot family, which feed on all the introduced fruit trees people have growing in their back yards. I guess all the imported water is having a major effect on the wildlife, too, not to mention all the channelized waterways destroying our natural riparian environment.
dance around in your bones
@raven: I sort of vaguely remember seeing it back in the day, but honestly the book The Yearling had a much more lasting impact on me.
I so thoroughly inhabited a book when I was a kid – I would just get lost in them and live in the environment they portrayed. I’d have to blink and ‘wake up’ from a (multi-hour) reading session.
This could happen with all kinds of books – I remember my mom coming to find me to eat dinner one night and I was sobbing on my bed after reading Charlotte’s Web. I was crying “Why do spiders have to DIE?” It was a visceral experience for me.
Oops – spoiler alert for those who haven’t read Charlotte’s Web!
JGabriel
John Cole: In Fairness, It Was a Really Scary Fawn
That’s hilarious. I rarely start laughing before I’ve even started reading the essay. but that did it. Great title, John.
Edited to Add: Just read it. Jesus, those guys are really sick assholes.
.
The Dangerman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Unjustifiable, unless they had some sort of 2 for 1 going on and were on a training run and popping the deer was just ancillary to their day’s work.
Citizen_X
In response to these actions by our brave law enforcement officers, I am morally required to post this video.
The Moar You Know
To which I say bullshit.
celticdragonchick
@Svensker:
Watch the video. You see how a lot of guys in military styled uniforms and MP5 submachine guns and shotguns are chasing people (even grabbing and half-throwing them) out of their homes at gunpoint without even a pretense of obtaining a writ or establishing probable cause. There is other video from that same day where a guy in a window with his cellphone is commanded to get the fuck away from the second story window (in his own house) and has a rifle pointed at his face.
That doesn’t even touch the shit that went down in LA when the police started making Swiss cheese out of random pick-up trucks this last winter.
Cops with miiltary guns, military uniforms and a militarized attitude will find a way to use those attributes on the rest of us at some point.
GregB
I hate Illinois Nazis.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
All true. I shudder to contemplate the fire season yet ahead until winter storms arrive, presuming for the moment we’ll actually have a winter this year.
Roger Moore
@Soonergrunt:
I think it’s something that can be done, but it will take a big change in public attitude toward crime. When people wake up to the massive decline in violent crime, they’re going to be a lot less inclined to write blank checks to their local PD to pay for all the fancy military hardware. It’ll start going even faster when the police start turning more of that hardware against crazy, heavily armed white bigots rather than Those People.
SteveinSC
Adolf von Niemeyer, Ober Gruppen Fuehrer der Schutz Stafel-Bristol has provided an ample and cogent explanation:
“If a sheriff’s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don’t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up,” Niemeyer said”
geg6
I grew up with guns all around me. My dad had them, every man in the neighborhood had one, and all my male friends got one when they turned 13 or 14. Hell, I shot clay pigeon at the local range and hunted turkey when I was in my early teens. All were responsible gun owners and I respected them and their right to have their guns. None of them acted like these assholes.
I have concluded that the only people that have guns these days are pants-shitting cowards. The gun is their binky. I have no respect for anyone who feels the need for any gun, let alone these murderous idiots who think a gun makes them manly and who are no better than George Zimmerman. It is now my default that if you own a gun, you are nothing but a coward and I want nothing to do with you and have no respect for you. There are a few cops I know who are exceptions to this, but not many.
Trollhattan
@celticdragonchick:
I’m still gobsmacked over that affair–and it happened more than once! I don’t know whether all the officers involved were discliplined or not, but the real problem is the culture within the departments. And that’s a lot harder to change.
dance around in your bones
@raven: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yearling
In the book Jody was a boy and Flag ate his own family’s crops.
LanceThruster
[Repeated line, while hunting]
Uncle Jimbo: It’s coming right for us!
Trollhattan
@The Dangerman:
“And if you guys all ace today’s test, I have a big surprise for you!”
“Ooh, is it ice cream?”
“Better!”
And, scene.
NotMax
@raven
There was a kid here I once knew peripherally (think when he grew up he was on the pro surf circuit for a while) whose given name (no joke, not a nickname) is Thumper.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. A lot of people like the responsible gun owners you’re describing are still out there; it’s just that they never show up in the news. The population of outright crazy, pants-shitting cowards- many of whom are racist assholes afraid of the imaginary brown hordes coming to murder them and rape their womenfolk- has almost certainly grown, but the bigger change is that the nuts have taken over the gun lobby, turned it into the paranoid gun fondler lobby, and gotten themselves on the news every day talking about their obsession.
SiubhanDuinne
@Paul in KY:
Fraid so. First sentence of the news story:
Keith G
@El Caganer:
Federalism. The state took care of it before it got to Obama’s desk.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: One of those Black Bears(Meatball) will be on Glendale’s Rose Parade float come January.
celticdragonchick
@geg6: I actually own several guns. The only one I have fired in the past three years is my King’s 2nd Land Pattern Brown Bess musket, since I am a Revolutionary War reenactor.
If you want to insist I am a coward, well, have at it. The RWNJ’s who hate me for being a transgendered person call me far worse.
raven
@celticdragonchick: I don’t suppose it matters that the Torrance Police shot Margie Carranza and Emma Hernandez with standard issue 9mm sidearms?
raven
@NotMax: Oh nos!!!!
Keith G
@Soonergrunt:
I think a bit differently.
Local cops militarize because they can. How can they?…
War on drugs $$$$
War on Terror $$$$$$$
When I learned that sequestration was causing hiring freezes and overtime cuts in many police departments, I was overjoyed. Baby steps.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: Judgmental much? Are all those relatives dead? Or did they all get rid of their guns? Or did you change your opinion of them?
Moe Gamble
Despair.
NotMax
@raven
Memory fail. Skating, not surfing. Turns out he even has a Wikipedia page!
JGabriel
Roger Moore:
What about when the police are the crazy, heavily armed, white bigots?
It seems to be a pretty common occurence.
scav
Wonder if they’ll soon start scrambling teams of snipers to ‘rescue’ cats stuck in trees. I mean, heights are dangerous and those things might be packing claws.
celticdragonchick
@raven:
If they had been using AR-15s, both women (and probably several neighbors in bed) would have been dead at the scene.
All the same, the attitude of police these days (and you see it all the time at blogs like Officer.com and Policeone) is that officer safety IS THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY and actual public safety and protection of civil rights and liberty are not even in contention at all.
That is why you see villages in Connecticut with APC’s, some Sheriff in South Carolina with a M113 track mounting an M2 .50 cal machinegun and the overall willingness to use overwhelming force in every possible situation.
Did you hear about the mass traffic stop in Aurora Colorado last year?
See here.
Men, women and children (and disabled people) pulled from cars at gunpoint and handcuffed for two hours…because of a suspicion that a bank robber was at the scene. Look real hard at the picture at that link. As a parent, I have never been able to forget it. That little boy was terrified and crying according to news reports, and well he should have been. Those officers were a heartbeat away from killing him.
But officer safety was certainly preserved, wasn’t it?
Cops debating that event in several blogs applauded the mass handcuffing of innocent people just for that very reason! Handcuffing and holding the public at gunpoint makes them safe! Of course, if the bank robber had decided to start shooting, well, you can imagine what would have happened next to several dozen handcuffed civilians.
Never forget that either. Your safety is not what concerns most police any more.
Roger Moore
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I hadn’t heard he was going to be on the Rose Parade float, but I’ve certainly heard of Meatball (aka Glen Bearian). I hear a lot more about bears in Monrovia, who seem to be the hot tub lovers.
Lavocat
When all you are is a hammer, everything else looks like a nail.
And, hey, nice touch by dealing with a purely civil matter with the introduction of over-the-top lethal force.
The boyz had their collective SWATgasm and went home happy.
Murca, Fuck yeah and all that.
Roger Moore
@celticdragonchick:
This is inseparable from the overall militarization. The police feel separated from the community they’re policing, so they militarize to protect themselves. That puts a further barrier between the police and the community, making them feel more apart. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a vicious circle. Community policing is supposed to be a way of breaking the cycle, but it’s obviously not a panacea.
celticdragonchick
@Roger Moore:
Yes.
Honest to God, I can actually say I am far more terrified of dealing with police then I am with the garden variety criminal.
Had a depressing (and illuminating) conversation this morning with an African American friend who is federal law enforcement (she is a federal park ranger) who told me that while visiting up in the Bronx, her son was grabbed by white cops as he literally stepped out of the apartment they were at. They insisted he was a drug dealer suspect. She produced her federal LE badge (quickly, before her husband got there and made things worse).
She is not a fan of the way that LE militarization has gone either.
Moesha
This wasn’t about the deer. This was a training exercise in citizen intimidation. They had AERIAL Photos of the barn & grounds. They were armed. I’ll bet there were a couple of rookies along for the ride.
I’m sure the newest team member was the one who dispatched the fawn. Like a gang initiation.
Just One More Canuck
I hear that answer all the time “That’s our policy” without the person saying it giving a millisecond of thought about the reason for the policy and with even less thought about explaining it to the person they say it to, as though the statement itself is explanation enough. “You mean that’s your policy? Ok, that’s good enough for me.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Just One More Canuck: In this case, if it was due to policy regard chronic wasting disease, an explanation would probably have calmed everything down. It doesn’t explain the SWAT gear. The DNR generally just busts people for fishing without a license or going over their limit.
RobNyny1957
The idea that they don’t smell because they don’t have sweat gland is very funny.
Roger Moore
@celticdragonchick:
The garden variety criminal is afraid of the law and tends to see killing you as an option of last resort. The police, not so much.
@Just One More Canuck:
They say “That’s our policy” is the modern equivalent of “I was following orders”. Neither is justification for doing something illegal or immoral, but they’re treated that way all the time.
Billy Dilly
As Rush Limbaugh once said “The purpose of the military is to break things and kill people.” So how does that square with law enforcement, when we militarize them? But more important, who is going to star as the commander of the special forces unit sent to go after Bambi Bin Laden in Katherine Bigelow’s sequel to Zero Dark Thirty? Jeremy Renner? Tatum Channing? Bradley Cooper?
kc
Maybe the fawn gave the cops a dehumanizing glance?
some call me . . . Tim?
That was no ordinary fawn. That was the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered beast you ever set eyes on! Look, that baby fawn had a vicious streak a mile wide! It was a killer!
Mark B.
I’ve had the experience of mowing the lawn and coming around the corner of the house and almost running the mower into a fawn who’s laying there waiting for mom to return. At that point, there’s nothing to do but shut down the mower, put it back in the shed and go inside for a couple of hours. In every instance the fawn has been gone by nightfall. And I get a break from mowing.
geg6
@celticdragonchick:
If I actually knew you, I might put you in the “exception” column. But the default is pants-shitting coward until the person can prove me wrong.
@Omnes Omnibus:
All the relatives who I learned about guns from are dead. The guys I grew up up with have either given up hunting and gotten rid of the guns or are truly pants-shitting cowardly Teabagging gun nuts. There are one or two exceptions among them, but that’s about it. Since I grew up around guns and this area of the country is polluted with gun nuts and I deal with these hicks all day every day, I feel no hesitation in being judgmental about it. Fuck them.
Roger Moore
@Billy Dilly:
It’s fine (with Limbaugh and his ilk) as long as they focus the violence on the correct neighborhoods and people. A lot of the problems with our police is that they were very deliberately built to keep minorities down so the white power structure could retain control. They aren’t going to get any better in practice until minorities have enough say in the political process to rein the police in. Even then, it’s going to be a long hard struggle because so much of that anti-minority mission has been institutionalized in the police departments.
Mino
@raven: An earlier Paula Deen
Trollhattan
@geg6:
Statistics bear this out, somewhat. We’re awash in vastly moar gunz yet the percentage of households with them is steadily declining. Hunting is less popular than ever, based on licenses issued. And, of course, a much smaller percentage of gunz sold are hunting rifles and shotguns.Whomever I speak with who has them but doesn’t hunt or shoot trap/skeet tells me it’s for protection against home invasion. Evidently there are a hell of a lot more of those than I think.
Gex
I feel sick. There are far too many in our culture that deal in death and misery and ENJOY it. I hate the 1%ers that stoke these kinds of cultural attitudes for their personal gain. They will cost us our humanity.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Violet:
Fawn Qaeda members need no weapons because they are the weapon! After they have grown and have been fully trained, these deer act as as an ICD (Improvised Collision Device) by standing next to roads and highways, ready to launch themselves into the vehicles of their unsuspecting victims at any time. Hell, some of the fawns are so enthusiastic about it that they don’t wait until training is complete before becoming an ICD!
Taking out this fawn now out weakens Fawn Qaeda and is a win for Amurica!!
Trollhattan
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Are you suggesting this was the latest #2?
RepubAnon
@Moesha: I guess we need to update Alice’s Restaurant: “And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had lying around at the police officer station. They took plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog-smelling prints – and they took twenty-seven 8 x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. They took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the Northwest corner, the Southwest corner… and that’s not to mention the aerial photography.”
sherparick
@Keith G: These of course the kind of cuts the Republicans want to restore. With of course off-setting cuts at EPA, Food Stamps, basic science research, medical research, food stamps, and about anything in Government that is not about blowing things up, keeping an eye on the doings of so-called citizens, and/or throwing people in jail.
A total lack of common sense by the DNR. Looking at the St. Francis Society Animal Shelter of Kenosha’s web page, they don”t look like they were ready to get in a fire fight to protect a fawn.
Klare
I think I’m going to be sick. As a liberal liberal I am thinking of Ruby Ridge.
Klare
I think I’m going to be sick.
Quinerly
Maybe the fawn gave the cops a dehumanizing stare WHILE wearing a hoodie
6spokewheels
@Comrade Misfit: A meth lab?! Bwah!, if this fawn scared the coward goons….
Arclite
I’m reminded of this South Park scene. “It’s coming right for us!”
kideni
As a Wisconsinite, I find it disgusting that the DNR has nine wardens to do something that could easily have been done with one or two, and maybe one sheriff’s deputy, but they can only spare one person to monitor frack sand mining in the entirety of western Wisconsin. My state is sick.
pseudonymous in nc
@Moesha:
Also too, primo overtime, towards the end of the month and just in time for vacay.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Trollhattan:
No, one day it could have been though! Just think, there’s one less ICD Wisconsinites have to worry about.
@Quinerly:
Or they thought it was a brown version of the Unabomber, which had to be taken out immediately before it blew up. After all, they did have the fugitive cornered.
g
@some call me . . . Tim?: That fawn was wearing a hoodie.
Ilya
A guy on reddit actually had a pretty good rationale for why the DNR did this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1jlt83/15_agents_and_4_police_in_a_massive_show_of_force/cbg05as
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From 5 minutes on Google:
Animal was euthanized to prevent disease spread
There’s an epidemic of a prion disease that kills deer and elk in this part of Wisconsin (inc. map)
Wildlife regulation restrict moving deer carcasses to protect healthy deer populations from being exposed
(So presumably moving a deer to a “wildlife shelter” in another state would be completely illegal)
(edit): There is currently no test for this disease in live animals. The current method is to examine brain tissue; nswf photos explain why only dead animals are tested.
The last thread on this was a major anti-cop circlejerk.
Turns out that “giggles” here was the potential host of a very dangerous disease. It also turns out that the “wildlife shelter” that “rescued” the doe were unlicensed, untrained, law breaking animal fanatics that refused to acknowledge that “giggles” was going to endanger the wildlife preserve that they planned on sneaking her into.
The officers acted in response to this news, animal nuts were breaking the law and endangering the wildlife. They didn’t want to risk the shelter ignoring them and release the deer early, so they couldn’t give a warning. They also didn’t want to show up unannounced and be shot at by animal nuts, so they took a few precautions.
All in all it was very professional, especially considering what was at risk.
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So yeah, sounds like the agency acted appropriately in this case, and the people trying to save the deer were in the wrong.
Comrade Misfit
@Ilya: Give me a break.
I volunteer at a no-kill shelter. They don’t have a stash of firearms. Most of the volunteers are women and most of them are retired. It took thirteen heavily armed cops to deal with the people at a no-kill shelter? That is an absurd premise.
We have gone from “one riot, one Ranger” to “one fawn, one fire team.”
Comrade Misfit
@Ilya: Give me a break.
I volunteer at a no-kill shelter. They don’t have a stash of firearms. Most of the volunteers are women and most of them are retired. It took thirteen heavily armed cops to deal with the people at a no-kill shelter? That is an absurd premise.
We have gone from “one riot, one Ranger” to “one fawn, one fire team.”
Paul in KY
@SiubhanDuinne: People are such scum, sometimes.