I'm friends with a few cops. One is a SWAT team member. All of them are people of integrity. Nothing pisses them off more than hearing about stuff like this happening. My SWAT buddy told me how they try not to hurt people during raids. One time they responded to a domestic with a weapon situation. They heard screaming from inside, busted open the door, and the guy met them with a butcher knife and started coming after them. They tased him. He said 5 years ago, that guy would have been shot on the spot due to his actions and the weapon he had.
The town next to ours has a reputation of overzealous cops. They think they are in the wild wild west with their tactics. It's at the point where certain judges won't even hear their cases because charges are trumped up and unjustified. They'll bust people who had nothing to do with crimes but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to pad their arrest numbers and ruin the lives of those people who now have to hire lawyers to fight the charges. There is one in particular who I'd love to catch in a dark parking lot off duty just once.
I have no doubt that most police officers, and most SWAT team members, are responsible, professional individuals. Nor do I expect that we will ever be without bad apples in the profession: the temptation for those who legally carry weapons and constantly see the worst of people to behave badly will always be there.
What really cheeses me off is not that these incidents happened, but the lack of accountability and the legal arrangements that allow them to happen. If there is a no knock raid on the wrong house, then there should immediately be an appology and compensation, especially if a family member or a pet is hurt or killed. None of this having to get a lawyer and spend years in court, none of this having to prove you were innocent (which, despite the Constitution, is the de facto situation. If an innocent bystander is killed, there should be a immedate and serious investigation (whether wrong house or right house). One of things Atlanta did right was welcoming an federal investigation (in fact, I think they asked the FBI in), which was a show of good faith and serious intent to deal with the problem.
Acts of causal and malicious cruelty, towards human beings or animals should be seriously punished and result in removal from this sort of operation. Shooting an elderly, crated dog is a sign of callousness that should immediately disqualify someone from being in the sort of situtation where they can exercise that sort of power. Not to speak of the Phoenix puppy-burning indicent . . .
Judges should be far more reluctant to give no-knock warrants and state and city legislatures should pass bills requring that such raids are only used when there is a genuine threat of violence (and don't give me the "all drug crimes are crimes of violence" crap) Honestly, if they flush the drugs, they flush the drugs . . . at the very least you have seriously inconvinenced them. But a few marijauana plants are not worth risking human life.
Police officers should also recieve more training in dealing with dogs, it seems, and be instructed to let family members attempt to gain control of their pets if this is reasonable. Right now, a no knock raid, wrong or right house, justified or not, is pretty much an assured death sentence for the family dog. Should the cops endanger themselves to protect the dogs? Of course not. But they should recieve more training in dealing with them in a non-lethal fashion. Indeed, as one of the stories above shows, the immedate reaction--shoot the dog--resulted in the death of an innocent woman and the maiming of her infant.
As long as law enforcement agencies shield officers who commit such acts and blame the victims, they will face public outrage (though not as much outrage as there SHOULD be) and a suspicious, wary, and often unco-operative public that has learned to be afraid of the police, even if they have nothing to hide.