Thursday 21 August 2008

Your choice - feed them or shoot them

There's a nice little story over at Bolta's about feral dogs eating a dead bloke.

I blogged a while back about a mate of mine who was a cop in WA back in the late 1980's/early 1990's and what he had to go through when dealing with our indigenous brethren.

One of his postings was to Kalgoorlie. He told me how they used to drive around at night in a paddy wagon shooting feral dogs with their Police issue pistols (using privately bought sub-sonic ammo, which makes less noise). He thought it was great target practice, and by the sound of it, he shot an awful lot of dogs.

Collecting the dogs was easy. They'd pick up a drunken blackfella to start with, put him in the back of the wagon, and tell him to get out and collect the carcases after they'd shot each one. They'd then drive to the tip, and have him offload all the dead dogs and cover them up with garbage.

They'd then give him a lift to wherever it was he wanted to go - back to his dossing spot, or the pub, or a fast food outlet.

What they were doing was so totally illegal in so many ways, it's not funny. But it helped to keep a really serious problem under control - a problem so bad, him and other Police risked their careers to do it. I'm sure he also had a lot of fun shooting the dogs, but that wasn't the motivating factor. He was more worried about all the people who were being treated for dog bites, especially young kids.

If I was him, I would have done the same. I hope there are still coppers out there that would do the same today.

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