law enforcement – Pain In The Bud

An Amazon Driver Took A Family’s Cat, And Amazon Has Not Been Helpful

Amazon’s response not only leaves a lot to be desired, it’s also an example of precisely what not to do when an issue goes beyond a simple customer service complaint. The company missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn a family’s gratitude.

An Amazon delivery driver took a Washington family’s cat and drove away with her on July 21.

Since then, Amazon has admitted its driver has the cat, but has offered little more than carefully-worded customer service responses mixed with boilerplate language about valuing the family’s business and feedback.

Ray and Karin Ishak have video of the driver petting and playing with 13-year-old Feefee in the family’s driveway during the delivery. The motion-activated camera timed out, according to a report by Seattle ABC affiliate KING5-TV, but when the camera began recording again, triggered by the driver pulling away, Feefee was gone.

“The driver [was] driving away and there’s not a cat in sight. It’s pretty obvious the cat disappeared in those seconds,” Ray Ishak told the station, adding he filed a report with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

feefeecamera — An Amazon driver playing with Feefee in the Ishak family’s driveway before driving away with the cat. Credit: Ray Ishak

Amazon has chosen to deal with the incident via email, as if it’s a dispute over a returned item rather than a living being who is valued as a family member by her people.

A company customer service representative told the Ishaks that the driver said she contacted the police to return Feefee, but the family called the sheriff’s office and the police in Everett, Washington, where they live, and both agencies told them they hadn’t heard from the driver or from Amazon.

The Ishaks asked Amazon if the company could at least tell them the town or city where the driver lives, figuring the driver may have contacted police there instead of the departments that have jurisdiction over their hometown. Amazon declined to provide that information.

When the Ishaks followed up with Amazon again, a customer service representative said she’d be happy to help — if the police approach Amazon. She provided an email address for law enforcement use only, said Amazon will cooperate if the police contact them, and ended the reply with a request to “vote about your experience today.”

This is an awful response by Amazon, and the company deserves any bad PR it gets as a result. The very first thing the company should have done was escalate the ticket to a manager empowered to take care of the case directly, and that manager should have picked up the phone, called the family and promised to get their cat back immediately.

If the company doesn’t have anyone in its customer care hierarchy who understands why it’s important to make that kind of judgment call, then it’s done a poor job of hiring and training its employees.

Alternately, Amazon’s known for keeping its employees on an extremely short leash — the company is notorious for watching its employees via cameras, has been fined tens of millions of dollars for “excessive surveillance” of its own workers, has forced employees to “justify” things like bathroom breaks, and operates on founder Jeff Bezos’ belief that employees are “inherently lazy” — so if the email-only response was due to strict company policy, that’s another negative that can be chalked up to a toxic corporate culture.

Treating this like a routine complaint only exacerbated the Ishak family’s stress and uncertainty regarding the fate of their beloved cat. Putting the onus on the family and the police to sort out of the problem makes things worse, and you’d think any halfway competent customer service rep would skip the “rate your service” pitch, at least until after the problem is solved and Feefee is back with her family.

Feefee with granddaughter — Ray Ishak said Feefee’s disappearance has been especially hard on his grandchildren, who love the gentle feline. Credit: Ray Ishak

It doesn’t matter how massive and successful the company is, there has to be a better way to handle issues like this without requiring even the police to approach Amazon like customers dialing a service line, or supplicants petitioning a king to turn his gaze toward a situation that normally falls beneath his notice. There’s also no recognition of the impact on Feefee, who is almost certainly confused and stressed at being separated from the only home and family she’s known for her entire life.

Lastly, Amazon missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn the gratitude of a family whose members are obviously very concerned about their cat. A PR win like that is worth a thousand commercials, and can earn enormous good will with customers. Instead, people will hear about how the company treats a problem like this as if a customer is returning a shirt that’s too small.

As for the Ishak family, they say they’re giving the driver the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she thought Feefee was a stray. But, as Ray Isha told KING5, it’s been made abundantly clear that Feefee is a beloved member of the family, and she needs to be returned.

“Maybe you did this out of the kindness of your heart,” Ray Ishak said. “I appreciate it, but bring me my cat back.”

Top image of Feefee as a kitten with one of Ray Ishak’s grandchildren courtesy of Ray Ishak, via KING5.

Alabama Cat Ladies Sue City Officials Over Arrest, Conviction For Trapping Cats

The women were arrested for managing a cat colony in the summer of 2022, convicted in December, then won a subsequent appeal in April of 2023. Now they’ve filed a lawsuit against the police and mayor involved in the saga, alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution.

Two women who were arrested for trying to manage a colony of stray cats have filed a lawsuit against the mayor, police chief, assistant chief and three officers involved in the ugly incident.

The July 2022 arrest drew nationwide outrage and condemnation as police responded in force to a complaint that Beverly Roberts, 86, and Mary Alston, 61, were trespassing in a wooded area and trapping cats. Body camera footage showed police treating the women like violent criminals, the police response itself was disproportionate, and the police chief doubled down on his insistence that the women deserved to be treated harshly even after damning footage showed the officers laughing about “beatin’ up on some old ladies.”

Now Roberts and Alston have sued Wetumpka Mayor Jerry Willis, Police Chief Greg Benton, the assistant chief and three officers, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

Noting that the women were paying out of their own pockets to help manage the stray cat population, the paper detailed the allegations in the civil suit:

“The suit alleges that Willis directed their arrests and that Benton and Reeves acted on the mayor’s orders. The women had angered city officials for “being vocal” about the care of animals in the city and appearing at several city council meetings to complain that the city was not enforcing anti-animal cruelty ordinances on the books, specifically the law banning the chaining or tethering of dogs, the lawsuit states.

The suit argues that the women were arrested under false circumstances. The women were originally charged with criminal trespassing.”

Footage of the summer 2022 arrest showed officers handling the women roughly, jabbing their fingers in their faces, threatening them with additional charges and barking at them to move more quickly.

The women were taken aback.

“I’m teetering on going to jail for feeding cats?” Alston asked in body camera footage of the police response.

Another officer towered over Roberts, jabbing a finger at her and warning it was “going to get ugly” if she didn’t move more quickly before eventually cuffing her.

bravecop — A Wetumpka police officer wags a finger at Roberts, who was 84 years old at the time, before handcuffing her hands behind her back and rifling through her personal possessions.

After a show trial in municipal court in late 2022, in which Roberts and Alston were convicted of trespassing by a judge appointed by Mayor Jerry Willis, the women appealed. Despite the conviction, the municipal trial resulted in the release of damning information, including the fact that it was Willis himself who called the police on Roberts and Alston, that he did so because he didn’t like their complaints about the way the city handled animal issues, and that he instructed the police to arrest the women before they arrived in four patrol cars and had a chance to assess the situation.

Willis called the police after spotting Alston’s car near a county-owned plot of land, and lacking any ordinance that prohibited feeding or trapping stray cats, the police resorted to charging the women with misdemeanor trespassing and “obstructing governmental operations,” a charge roughly equivalent to resisting arrest.

But the land was county-owned, there were no prohibitions on managing cat colonies or conducting TNR (trap, neuter, return), and the footage — which police tried to hide from the public for months before finally caving to legal threats from attorneys for the women — was damning, drawing universal condemnation.

Roberts and Alston appealed, and in April of 2023 county court Judge J. Amanda Baxley accepted a motion by prosecutors to drop the case.

The civil suit “alleges unlawful seizure and detention, excessive force, malicious prosecution, negligence, wantonness and other counts,” per the Advertiser.

Attorneys for Roberts and Alston didn’t specify a dollar amount, but said they’re seeking “compensatory and punitive damages” and legal fees related to the arrest and resulting drama, which has played out for more than a year and a half. A spokesman for the City of Wetumpka did not respond to the Advertiser’s request for comment.

SPCA Offers $6k Reward After Shooter Kills NY Woman’s Beloved Cat

Stella’s shooting is the latest in an inexplicable trend of people targeting cats with pellet guns.

When Margaret Oliva’s husband died eight years ago, her cat Stella helped her through her grieving.

“She was my sanity, you know?” the Long Island woman said.

Oliva’s beloved tortoiseshell went outside on Sept. 1 and didn’t come back that night. Oliva enlisted the help of relatives to find Stella but wasn’t able to locate her until she heard “whimpering cries” on her Ring system’s audio.

Stella had collapsed near a bush on the front lawn. Oliva rushed her badly injured cat to an emergency veterinarian, where the fading feline fought for her life but succumbed hours later. The vet told the shocked Hicksville woman that someone had shot Stella twice, likely with a pellet gun.

“To have her taken like this…No, I can’t accept that,” Oliva told a local TV news station.

Now the SPCA is offering a $6,000 reward to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest and conviction of Stella’s killer. Matt Roper, a detective with the Nassau County SPCA’s law enforcement division, said he believes Stella was shot by someone in the immediate neighborhood.

spcastella — The SPCA is offering a $6,000 reward for Stella’s killer.

Studies have shown that house cats who are allowed to wander outside during the day rarely go far. In a paper published in Scientific Reports earlier this year, a team of scientists from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences tracked 100 indoor/outdoor cats by equipping them with GPS collars. The data showed cats spend almost 80 percent of their time within 50 meters — or about 164 feet — of their homes, and a handful of statistical outliers who traveled a longer distance didn’t exceed more than a quarter mile.

The SPCA’s Roper said Stella suffered one projectile to her chest and one to a leg. Her killer is likely nearby and almost certainly knows about the anguish caused to Oliva. If caught, the killer could face a felony charge.

“This could be a high powered pellet gun,” Roper said. “This could be something that could be shot a couple of houses length, a couple of yards in length.”

Young Abraham was left with a pellet lodged in his spine after he was shot in October of 2021 in eastern Long Island.

Gracie was paralyzed when she was shot twice with a pellet gun in the summer of 2021.

Oliva’s home in Hicksville is about 10 miles from Glen Cove, where a cat named Gracie was shot and left paralyzed last summer when one pellet hit her stomach and another hit her spine. Poor Gracie was in a neighbor’s yard, dragging herself toward her home while her back legs hung limp. A woman found Gracie after hearing her crying out in pain, Newsday reported.

“What happens is a woman takes her kids for a walk,” said detective Lt. John Nagle of the Glen Cove Police Department. “When she returns to the house she hears an animal crying and goes to investigate. She finds this cat, just beyond the neighbor’s chain link fence, and the animal is crying and it can’t walk. Another neighbor, who happens to be a vet, comes over. She gets a cat cage, places it in the yard — and the cat immediately crawls over to it … She takes the cat to her vet, where she works, thinking maybe it’s been hit by a car. That’s when she finds out it’s not damage from a car, but that there’s two bullets.”

There’s a $5,000 reward for Gracie’s shooter.

In October of 2021, a young cat the rescuers named Abraham was shot with a pellet gun in Suffolk County on eastern Long Island. Like Gracie, Abraham was struck in his spine. The SPCA of Suffolk County, which called Abraham’s shooting “a horrific act of animal cruelty,” is offering a $4,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his shooter.

graciecatreward — Gracie’s shooter hasn’t been found yet either.

Cat’s Brutal Murder May Be A Hate Crime, Police Say

The cat belonged to a police officer, which may be why he was targeted.

After Josie Saltarelli’s cat, Capone, went missing for a few days, it was her 13-year-old daughter who found him — directly across from the family’s driveway and cleaved neatly in two, as if to send a message.

“I don’t know how anyone could do that to an animal,” Saltarelli told a local TV news channel in Oklahoma. “The last image we have of him is cut in half and gutted. My 13-year-old daughter had to see that and that is our memory of him, and it’s awful.”

Capone had been with the family his entire life, for nine years, and was well-loved, his family and neighbors told local media. He was found on Aug. 20.

Police and a local veterinarian have ruled out another animal, due to the precision of Capone’s wounds and the fact that the cat was placed in front of their home.

capone2 — *Capone in his family’s home.*

Now there’s a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest, and police in Tulsa are treating the killing as a hate crime. They suspect the cat was killed because Saltarelli’s boyfriend is a police officer, and the family flies a “Thin Blue Line” flag in front of their home as a message of support for law enforcement. Like officers in many smaller jurisdictions, Saltarelli’s boyfriend also drives his patrol car home and parks it in his driveway.

“For that reason, investigators believe someone could be targeting the officer and his family,” the Tulsa Police Department wrote in a press release about the case.

The Oklahoma Alliance for Animals is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for killing Capone.

“It is well documented and proven that violence and abuse against animals leads to other major crimes,” the group wrote in a Facebook post about the killing, “including violence against children and elders. We need to find the person who did this.”