The NYPD says its hands are tied after a group of people sent their pit bulls after a well-known shop cat in Manhattan and cheered as they dogs brutally ended the tabby’s life.
Freddy was the resident moggie at Michelle Flowers, a florist on Amsterdam Avenue in Washington Heights. The little guy was outside the shop at about 9 p.m. on July 4 when a man and two women set their dogs loose on him, then celebrated and cheered as they killed him.
The pit bull owners then “smoked, danced and ate food while taking photos and mimicking the grisly scene,” according to the New York Post. Surveillance cameras caught the attack and its aftermath, showing the three black-clad dog owners and others who witnessed the violence and did nothing.
A disgusted neighbor contacted the Cat Collective, a group of volunteers who feed and care for strays in the neighborhood, and they collected Freddy’s remains, then told the florist’s owner what happened.
“Someone deliberately set dogs on a defenseless cat while people watched and cheered,” Dan Rimada of Bodega Cats of New York told the Post.
Cat Collective is offering cash rewards to anyone who can identify the dog owners and the celebrating bystanders, but the police won’t do anything.
An NYPD spokesman told the paper that “harm or death to an animal caused by another animal is not a criminal matter,” citing a gap in the law.
A proposed bill, dubbed Penny’s law after a chihuahua that was mauled by pit bulls earlier this year in Manhattan, hasn’t made it out of committee in the New York State legislature, while New York’s city council is looking at a municipal law that would make it a crime to set dogs on other animals.
It’s actually difficult to believe nothing can be done to get justice for Freddy, Penny and other animals aside from civil cases, which can only result in monetary damages.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who is controversial to say the least for creatively interpreting the law, seems like just the kind of district attorney who could find a way to prosecute the dog owners. The fact that the authorities are outright dismissing the possibility indicates Bragg doesn’t see this as a priority.
Working with the police to find ways to get justice is Bragg’s job, as well as the job of the attorneys working for him in the district attorney’s office. At the very least, they should be able to find something with which to charge the suspects, even if it really turns out there’s no way to hold them criminally accountable for Freddy’s death.
We hope Freddy’s killers are identified and held responsible, and we hope no more pets and strays have to be killed before lawmakers at the city and state level make it a priority to close an obvious gap in the law.
Pain In The Bud 
Cops won’t do anything … they never do. I think If scumbags are going to be vile & evil when it comes to animal cruelty like this. Then people who are enraged by it should be able to go out and hunt these shitbulls down and end their existence. And “IF” scumbags try to interfere … OH WELL .. they can cease breathing too
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Disgusting. Unbelievable to me that this is not illegal.
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If they thought this was a priority, or were sufficiently motivated by backlash, the DA and his staff would find a way to go after these people, even if it’s an indirect charge. Alvin Bragg, our DA, is famous for digging up archaic laws and repurposing them, but unfortunately he’s also famously soft on crime.
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BS!!!!! COPS CAN, BUT WILL NOT, DO A DAMNED THING!! After all its only a cat!!
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Some pitbulls already killed someones dog in Manhattan.
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Yeah that was the chihuahua case in May, the one the state bill is named after. (Penny’s Law)
We’ll see if this incident moves the needle for our notoriously ineffective state legislature.
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Back when I lived in Philly, I was a PAWS volunteer who once a week took care of the PAWS cats at the local PetSmart.
One day this dick-less wonder happened by, engaged in the entertainment of having his pitbull lunge at the cats (who, thank GOD were behind glass). I tried to be polite, i.e. “Can you please stop doing that? It scares the cats,’ but pretty soon I was all “A**HOLE, can you get your f**king dog away from the cats????’
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People blame the breed when it’s obvious it’s the kind of people who buy those dogs who are the problem. Not all of them, of course, but the pit bull does seem to be the preferred breed of anti-social and violent clowns. The Cat Collective post made it a point to note the dogs were victims here too, as there were apparently signs of abuse in the full footage. Who knows what sort of things people do to their dogs to get them to behave like that.
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Bastards , I can’t believe the police won’t do anything 😡
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I don’t understand why the law couldn’t be interpreted as the people using the dogs as weapons against the cat. Guess whoever’s in charge doesn’t want to
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We have a state attorney general and a Manhattan DA who are hyper-focused on politics, campaigned on promises to prosecute political enemies, and don’t seem to care about anything that doesn’t get them on TV, in the papers and in the online discourse. I’m not saying that from any ideological perspective, because honestly I strongly dislike ideology and the two-party system. I think it makes everything a zero-sum game, allows the electorate to abdicate their responsibility to think about issues individually, and is breaking our political system.
But the truth is, they don’t seem to care about animal-related crime or even basic quality of life, and that apathy is endemic in New York state politics. It’s one of the reasons the declawing ban was killed in committee for years until animal advocacy groups, a handful of lawmakers who care, and regular New Yorkers put so much pressure on the hold-outs that they could no longer justify doing what the state’s Veterinary Medical Association wanted, which was to keep declawing legal. (The VMAs are comprised of vets who see declawing, tail docking, etc., as revenue streams, not mutilation of animals.)
Anyway, the short version is that no, they don’t care. And you’re right, it wouldn’t take much to charge them with something, even if it’s abuse of the dogs themselves to turn them into aggressive, dangerous animals.
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Well, that stinks
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