I'd like to know the reason for shooting the dogs

in this case, and a lot of others. Dog is actually attacking you, no problem; dog is hiding under something or running away, big damn problem.

There's plenty to bitch about in this case: unnecessary use of the doorkickers, basically making a point of not letting the local cops know what you're doing, etc. Right now I'm thinking about the single point
As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.

Why? Why the dogs if they're not a threat? Why crap like this
But for all that, the image that sticks in your head, as described by John Dougherty in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, is that of a puppy trying to escape the fire and a SWAT officer chasing him back into the burning building with puffs from a fire extinguisher. The dog burned to death.

In a massive 1998 raid at a San Francisco housing co-op, cops shot a family dog in front of its family, then dragged it outside and shot it again.

When police in Fremont, California, raided the home of medical marijuana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine times. Filgo himself was never charged.

Last October police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of marijuana possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the kill in front of the family. They seized eight grams of marijuana, equal in weight to a ketchup packet.

In January a cop en route to a drug raid in Tampa, Florida, took a short cut across a neighboring lawn and shot the neighbor's two pooches on his way. And last May, an officer in Syracuse, New York, squeezed off several shots at a family dog during a drug raid, one of which ricocheted and struck a 13-year-old boy in the leg. The boy was handcuffed at gunpoint at the time. ?

I've known people who'd put up with all kinds of stuff being done to themselves, but if you hurt their dog without damn good reason, you'd better watch your back from then on. And this kind of garbage, to say the least, kind of screws up your 'Officer Friendly' image, especially chasing a puppy into a burning building.

So I'm wondering why?