more adventures of seattle's best police department.

[rwx]

From last night's bear incident in the U District:

Chandler said a police officer used a Taser on the bear. "If you Tase a human, they usually say, 'I give up!' and stay down," he said. But as soon as the officer turned off the Taser, the bear got up and tried to run.
Chandler sprinted to his truck to retrieve a syringe with more tranquilizers, when he saw a group of officers running down the street.
"They looked like rats running off a sinking ship," he said. Behind them was the bear. An officer used the Taser again, and Chandler plunged the syringe into the bear's behind. The bear struggled and twitched.
"Then all of sudden, he was still," he said.
The bear was dead, apparently from the tranquilizers and shocks from the Taser.

article from local fish-wrapping.
Whenever I try to wrap my head around this, I just picture Dick Cheney saying, "I would have tasered the bear even if i knew the bear would be killed, the bear had to be shown that america is strong."
Basically, I can't get over the quail incident.
The following quote either explains a lot about america or is the most unfortunate use of pronouns ever:

Across the street, a man, who wanted to be identified only as Mark, said he thought police had someone dangerous in custody. Then he walked outside.
"I realized it wasn't a person," he said. "It's sad it turned out that way."

yah, buddy, you go.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

That's sad that they killed it.

Just a month or so ago, Jesse and I had a conversation about whether there were bears in Seattle (since I have seen coyotes, hawks, etc near my house).

There's one hanging around the house of the people who run the coven I'm studying with, but since they live in the Cascade foothills this is less than surprising.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Also, it's pretty clear to me from reading that, that they didn't really know what they were doing when it comes to handling wildlife.

Not too surprising since the kind of wildlife police officers are usually trained to deal with is rather different, but it's not unusual for trank darts to take awhile to have an effect.

[fritterfae.livejournal.com]

How the F*** did a bear get loose in the U. Dist? 8|

[frosch.livejournal.com]

dunno. How did the Cherokees get loose in South Carolina?

reminds me of the horde of northward-migrating Californians that descended on Bellevue in about 1990. One of them built a $300k house on the west side of Phantom Lake (back when $300k would still buy quite a bit of house), and showed up at a community council meeting about six months later bitching about how the coyotes ate his cat, and demanding that the city do something about it.

The house I was living in at the time was cantilevered about five feet off the back of the foundation (just far enough that I'd have to take a propane torch to the garden spigot every time we got a nice stiff freeze). One night in bed I had to listen to somebody's cat meeting an untimely demise directly underneath my bedroom floor.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that, like most bears, it walked.

I can't be even a little bit surprised about this. Increased development tends to result in an increase in human-animal encounters; development in the Snoqualmie Valley, for example, is probably the reason that some of my friends in the Preston-Fall City area are seeing bears around a lot more than they used to (their property is mostly wooded).

But wait, you say, that's a little different than a bear showing up in the middle of a major metropolitan area. And you'd be right. But one other thing that increased human-animal contact results in is that animals reach a certain comfort level interacting with people and people's things. Cf. all those reports about bears raiding garbage cans and dumpsters near Yellowstone. Bears range over an incredibly large area (up to 60 square miles in some cases) and will expand it as opportunity arises or former ranging areas become restricted. They are very intelligent animals with excellent memories and are good at moving around without being noticed by people. Given the abundance of green space and forested areas in Seattle, I'm not at all surprised that a bear got this far inside the city limits.

This incident makes me sad because it's going to keep happening. If a coyote can end up in Central Park, bears can certainly end up in Seattle.

wtf

[batboymaxx.livejournal.com]

I keep wondering why in the hell cops, rather than professionals, were dealing with this. Of course the bear died. Of course a cop would have no idea what to do with a bear. Suck.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

"I don't get it, on television shows animals fall *right* *over* after getting shot with tranquilizers..."

yeah, exactly.

you'd think, incidentally, that they'd know better from things like having seen haldol (tranq) administered to humans, an animal of roughly the same size and frequently intelligence.

Re: wtf

[rwx.livejournal.com]

i think their operative guidelines are safety to humans first, safety to animals second.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

the thing that gets me about coyotes is the fact that they expose and poop on traps when they find them. that's somewhat hilarious behavior, and no doubt pleases the trappers of coyotes to no end.

Re: wtf

[batboymaxx.livejournal.com]

"i think their operative guidelines are safety to humans first, safety to animals second."

Well, yeah, obviously. I never questioned that. I'll clarify: What I said was "I keep wondering why in the hell cops, rather than professionals, were dealing with this." In other words, I would have thought that animal control experts would have been called rather than police, who I doubt were properly trained to deal with something like that. It sounds like they were just freaking the animal out by chasing it around and zapping it with tazers, thus probably making it more upset and dangerous than it already was. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (who have a King County office) are supposed to be the ones who respond to bear sightings when there is a threat to public safety or property. I'm guessing that someone called 911 (which was the right thing to do) and it was just dealt with poorly. It's a good thing that none of the cops or U-District kids were hurt.