Update on St. Bernard dog shooting--much more horrible than we thought

Many of you will remember that when the residents of St. Bernard fled Hurricane Katrina last year, many of them--thinking they would return soon--left plenty of food and water for their dogs. When they returned, some of those people found their dogs dead, not from starvation or drowning, but from gunshot wounds. Members of the St. Bernard Sheriff's Department had killed them.

There was a lot of outrage over these shootings, which seemed mindless and cruel, but we have only just learned how cruel they were. Most of us assumed that a group of ignorant, inhumane law enforcement officers decided it was easier to shoot dogs than round them up for the animal rescue groups. But that isn't what happened at all. Now that a lawsuit has been filed against the deputies, the truth has finally come out: The nearly twenty deputies did not go in and mow down the dogs. They shot them in ways that would cause them to suffer great pain and slowly bleed to death. The dogs were shot in the mouth, the hindquarters and the feet. In other words, the St. Bernard post-Katrina dog shooting was an act of malicious sadism.

Threatening the dogs' guardians with arrest if they tried to bring them along on the rescue vehicles, law enforcement officers assured people their dogs would be safe. Then they tortured them. Had their been no suit filed, what really happened would have covered up forever, depsite the sheriff of St. Bernard Parish suddenly reassuring everyone he didn't want to be part of a cover-up.