Is the 6th Circuit decision worth barking over?

A December 19th, a decision came down from the 6th Circuit that had dog-lovers country-wide expressing their outrage.  Brown v. Battle Creek Police Department No. 16-1575 (6th Cir. 2016) (Full Opinion Available Here) had dog-lovers barking mad as social media exploded over the case.  But did Brown v. Battle Creek Police Dept. really change existing law?

A dog is property.  I don't care how "trendy" the hashtag #furkids is or what a multi-million billon dollar industry the pet industry is.  (True story - it surpassed 60 billion last year.)  Either way you shake it, a dog is legally property and the Constitution of the United States protects its citizens from unreasonable governmental seizures of property.  (Killing is seizing for these purposes.)  It all boils down to reasonableness.  The majority, if not all, of the circuits have addressed the killing seizing of personal pets and they have all focused on the reasonableness of the action.

It is this "reasonableness" that makes me barking mad.  Some courts use the breed of the dog to justify the actions.  In particular, Altman v. City of High Point (a 2003 4th Circuit case) placed a lot of emphasis on dog breed in determining that the shooting of dogs running at large was reasonable and therefore justified.  The breed?  Pit bulls.  Altman, cited for persuasive purposes in Brown v. Battle Creek, opines that pit bulls are "a dangerous breed of dog."  The dog referred to in Altman was Hot Rod, who was only half-pit according to the opinion.  Hot Rod had not attacked anyone.  Despite this, the court concluded that "Officer Moxley attempted to and succeeded in killing the animal, thereby removing, for all Moxley knew, a potentially dangerous pit bull from the public streets."  (Emphasis mine.)

Now this is the kind of language to get riled up about - NOT the fact that officers can kill dogs.  Brown v.  Battle Creek used the language of Altman as one of the reasons the shooting of two pit bulls was justified.  The court's reliance on this argument is misplaced as Breed Specific Legislation has failed time and time again.  Particular breeds are not inherently dangerous and should not be viewed as such.  Any breed can be dangerous; dogs are animals.

Furthermore, Brown v. Battle Creek cites the dog owner's criminal history, gang affiliations, and the type of drugs they were seeking as reasons that killing the dogs was reasonable.  I'm sorry - say what? So because the owner is a criminal, the dog is clearly a threat?  This makes little sense.

 Reasonableness in killing a dog hinges on whether the dog poses an imminent threat.  Brown doesn't change that.  But is it reasonable that in determining whether a dog poses an imminent threat that the owner's background be considered?  That the breed be a deciding factor?  In this instance, despite reports indicating the dogs were "barking" and allegedly "lunging," I'm not entirely convinced the dogs could not have been otherwise "seized" in a manner that would not have resulted in their deaths, and the court's reliance on out-dated breed specific logic and the owner's criminal background makes me question the "reasonableness" of the officer's actions.

*Photo is of my own "half-pit" dangerous dog.