Compensation Should Be Paid By The Police....

Maidstone Crown Court was told the dog had four months earlier attacked a Jack Russell and its owner.

And no-one did a thing. As usual. Pity it wasn't a cop knocking on the door this time.

Medway housing officer Theresa Lamb was visiting a grandmother’s home in Chatham when two-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier Rome clamped its jaw on her right arm.

The dog - described by a judge as “highly aggressive and highly strung” - sank its teeth in right down to the bone.

The useless chav 'looking after' the suburban hellhound proved to be as ineffective and unconcerned as you'd expect from her breed...

Despite Wendy Hooper trying to beat off the pet with a broom, it went for the victim twice more.

As well suffering wounds to her arm, Mrs Lamb’s hand was bitten. She only managed to escape by jumping over a garden fence. She suffered permanent disfigurement and is still having treatment.

Hooper, who was looking after Rome while the owner was at work, later told police it was simply “doing its job” protecting the house.

From the council. Let that sink in.

Hooper was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years after admitting being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control, causing injury.

She was ordered to complete 180 hours unpaid work and banned from owning or caring for a dog for three years.

She should have served the whole sentence and been banned for life. What was the reason for this (utterly characteristic) leniency?

Judge Julian Smith said the 42-year-old had shown genuine remorse and she was the carer for her registered blind daughter, aged 21.

Oh, for...!

But he added: “There is a history here of which you would have been aware and it is worrying in the extreme. You chose to have that dog in the house and it is perfectly clear it was an animal that could change at any time.”

The judge ordered Rome’s destruction.

Pity it wasn't shot on sight. How much has it cost to have the creature in police kennels?

Judge Smith declined to make a compensation order after hearing Hooper was on benefits.

They always are, yet no judge ever says 'Wait, hang on, you can afford a dog?', do they?

It will, however, be sought in the civil courts by Mrs Lamb.

Good! I hope she leaves this cretin the clothes she stands up in, and nothing else. But it's incumbent on me to point out that if the police had acted after the first attack, this woman wouldn't have been injured.

So maybe they should be on the hook too?