One for the stupid files.

[Godiva]

Like she never heard of microchips? Surveillance cameras? Her dumb luck her license plate number was taken. Dumber still she went back to remove the collar.

"A San Diego County corrections deputy who stole a neighbor's dog and abandoned it 20 miles from her Hemet home was sentenced Wednesday to 60 days in jail, Riverside County court records show."

I don't see why she isn't fired. If *I* commit any kind of a crime I lose my teaching credential. I can't teach without it so I also lose my job. Why is a criminal employed by county Sheriff?

[dogfriend]

That woman is about as sharp as a marble. At least the dog was ok.

[patsparks]

Stupid but I suspect the dog had driven her to the end of her tether.

[qbee42]

People involved in public professions such as health care and law enforcement should be held to high standards. I have zero tolerance for someone deliberately violating the ethics of this type of profession, let alone committing a crime. It's time for this woman to find another line of work.

A similar, but much worse episode occurred a few years ago and involved a pharmacist who diluted chemotherapy drugs to increase his profit margin. He was eventually caught and went to prison, and rightly so. He was in a position of public trust, and violated that for simple personal gain. To me that was a much worse offense than armed bank robbery.

On a personal note, I can sympathize with the notion of wanting to kill your neighbors dog. We may need to revisit animal ownership laws if people can't be responsible owners.

Tom

[daniel]

It says she was a corrections deputy. I think "corrections" is official-speak for jail. The woman is a jail or prison guard. Prison guards are often well below average intelligence, because nobody else will take the job, and often mentally imbalanced, as the result of years in such a demeaning and miserable and inhumane job as keeping people in cages. (Very few of the people in jail are the kind of criminals that any rational person would believe need to be put in a cage.)

So we have a below-average-intelligence, mentally-disturbed person driven over the edge by a dog that probably yapped non-stop for hours on end. Dogs that yap constantly should be required to be kept inside a soundproof building.

During the first 6 months I lived in Spain, the only window in my apartment was about 3 feet from a balcony of another apartment. Every time I opened my window, the neighbor's small dog started yapping, and did not stop yapping the entire time my window was open. That dog could, and did, yap, non-stop, for hours on end. Had I not been afraid of the legal consequences, I'd have poisoned that dog. In the end, I paid a one-month penalty to terminate my lease and I moved out.

I think the CO in the article showed admirable restraint in merely kidnapping the dog and transporting it, rather than strangling it.

[daniel]

Originally Posted by qbee42

People involved in public professions such as health care and law enforcement should be held to high standards...

If you tried to hold prison guards to any kind of standards, you wouldn't have any prison guards. We're not talking "serve and protect" here. We're talking "cuff-em and stuff-em."

[qbee42]

Originally Posted by daniel

If you tried to hold prison guards to any kind of standards, you wouldn't have any prison guards. We're not talking "serve and protect" here. We're talking "cuff-em and stuff-em."

Good point. I missed the subtle wording that implied jail guard, as opposed to police officer. That said, many police officers wouldn't pass my test either.

Tom

[sdtundra]

Not all are bad, just have to say that. I was on the SD County Sheriff's Hiring list last year from January-August. I was dropped because I was too young and lacked life experience. I was trying to become a Corrections Officer and use that as a stepping stone to getting out on patrol duty. Now looking back at it, I'm kind of happy I decided to go a different direction.

I took a 3 week EMT-B class through the community college here, M-F 8-5, passed that with a 958/1000 pts and the practical skills exam. I am heading out in 30 minutes to take my cognitive computer based exam which will solidify my EMT National Registry and I can start working. A lot of the questions on the class final were relating to Legal and Ethical Issues in Prehospital Care. I was surprised in reading some of the articles posted in the class such as "Paramedics with patient en route to hospital stop by house to drop off groceries" Stupid stuff like that is what gets people fired and ruins it for the "good guys"

[Dave_PH]

Tough one. I have a next door neighbor with a dog that barks non-stop. After a while I actually considered feeding the dog a large amount of chocolate so she'd go out with a smile. Until you've lived next to a non-stop barker you really can't appreciate the impact. She even chewed a whole through the privacy fence and stuck her snarling yapping jaws through.

What saved her is that I'm like the prison guard and couldn't actually hurt a dog. Eventually I met the dog despite the red neck hostile neighbors, who beat the dog to try to quiet it, and fell in love with her. She's a neurotic little thing from a shelter who actually loves people.

She did try the legal route first so 60 days does seem excessive. I think she should have had to serve time working at a rescue shelter.

[dogfriend]

I've been on both sides of the fence, so to speak. A few years ago, our neighbors dog would bark for hours at a time. My GF got so fed up one night that she opened the neighbors gate, hoping the dog would run off. The dog didn't run off, but did stop barking. We realized that the dog was just very bored and lonely as our neighbors were rarely home during the week. That dog finally died as a result of cancer, just a couple of months before we had to put our dog Penny down, also as a result of cancer.

Our dog Digby is a barker and he also tends to get Dingo barking too. We make an effort to discourage the barking, but our neighbors (the same ones) have a spa next to the fence and are sometimes noisy when they have a group of visitors, so the dogs like to go out and bark at them. They have only complained once about it, about a year ago. I continue to discourage the barking, and the dogs are getting better about ignoring the noises from the other side of the fence.