The police were serving a warrant for a sexual assault according to this article
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2...ssault_pro.php

Also I asked a friend who is a police officer and he said during a warrant raid it is pretty much standard ops that any dog doing anything except lying on the couch is going to get shot dead. They take absolutely no chance of an officer being injured.

It sounds like they served a warrant for one thing and found other law violations relating to the reptiles not that they went in looking for reptiles. Be interesting to hear both sides of the story. In there somewhere is the truth.