I've been thinking about this dog-thing for some time. A while back, there was a mayor of a small town in Maryland upon whom a search warrant was served by mistake. Seems the county cops came bursting in late at night or early morning, unannounced, and with guns drawn in full combat gear, purportedly expecting crackheads with fully automatic weapons. First thing they did was shoot the friendly, sweet, adorable family pets. They said later they'd gotten the wrong address on the warrant. Ooops.
That, to me, was purely a demonstration of how an individual can be targeted as the result of political problems, and nothing else. Standard Maryland politics. But the dog thing bothered me.
I tell people my dog is a trained killer - if anyone breaks into the house, my dog will lick them to death. He's the sweetest dog on the planet but he looks dangerous, weighing about 125 lbs and almost all black.
So if I were in a situation like this guy was, observing the process by which the cops were preparing to "taze" his dog, I'm thinking how would the legalities go, at least in Virginia. Not that this wouldn't be a tough row to hoe, but I think it's doable.
1) The basic rule of self-defense doesn't require me to know with scientific certainty that the object being used in the attack is nonlethal. It requires "a reasonably held, good faith belief, based on objective fact", which is why cops get away with killing people who suddenly pull cell phones out of their pockets during traffic stops.
2) The rule of self-defense doesn't require me to know for sure where and how the attacker plans to attack. I'm not required to know what's in his mind. So I don't need to know whether that gun-like weapon he's pointing in "our" direction is a firearm, a tazer, or a squirt-gun, or what he plans to do with it. If he's pointing it in "our" direction, sure, he may be attacking the dog, but he's also assaulting me.
3) The cop has no business having a weapon out at all unless he perceives a threat. And it makes absolutely no difference whether he "was in fear for his life", since no one but him is responsible for his purely subjective emotional responses. That's why the self-defense rule requires, "a reasonably held, good faith belief", not "fear". It is a violation of the citizen's right to due process of law for the cop to threaten deadly force where none is required because of "an imminent threat of serious bodily injury to himself or another innocent person".
4) An offer of deadly force by the cop where none is required, and who appears to be trespassing after having been told to leave in the absence of a warrant or other authority, takes that cop out of the realm of official action. At that point, his actions are criminal in nature (regardless of the fact that official corruption and cronyism would prevent his being prosecuted), and the person who shoots him, having a "reasonably held, good faith belief, based on objective fact, that he, or another innocent person is faced with the imminent threat of a serious bodily injury" is not criminally responsible for doing so.
5) "Assault" is the offer of an immediate battery to the person of another. A "battery" is the unprivileged, offensive touch to the person of another, without cause, justification, or excuse. An assault can be resisted with such force as is reasonably necessary under the circumstances. Pointing a thing that appears to be a weapon in the direction of me and my family while I'm on my property will excuse my use of deadly force in repelling the attack. And when "they" shoot at "us", we're entitled to shoot back, assuming there is no reason we know of why they have an official sanction, such as a warrant. That's the reason cited by the Court of King's Bench back in the late 1500's for the creation of "the Castle Doctrine" that prohibits no-knock warrants.
6) As a practical matter, cops are a protected species and if you shoot one, they will murder you, one way or another. This is a principle first enunciated by my late great-uncle, who'd been Chief of the City of Alexandria Police Department at the time, and was in a position to know what he was talking about. I don't think things have changed much since then.