police – Page 6 – Pain In The Bud

Pet Theft Up 40 Percent Since Pandemic, Criminologist Says

Incidents like Sunday’s attempted cat robbery are happening more often in recent years, a forensic investigator specializing in animal-related crimes says.

Pet theft is a low-risk, high-reward way for the criminally-minded to make a quick buck, which is one reason why such crimes have become much more common since the pandemic, a forensics professor told the New Haven Register.

Virginia Maxwell, who specializes in forensic investigation of animal cruelty, spoke to the newspaper in the wake of Sunday’s failed gunpoint robbery when two men broke into an East Haven, Conn., home and demanded the victims’ “high dollar value cat.”

But first we’d like to draw your attention to an announcement we made back in February of 2021. At the time pet theft was in the headlines after robbers shot a man walking Lady Gaga’s breed dogs, while across the country in Portland a man stole a van full of daycare-bound pups.

Here’s what we wrote at the time:

“Buddy would like everyone to know he does not actually live in New York, and that his true location is a secret.

“I could be living in Rome,” the troublemaking tabby cat said. “I could be Luxembourgish. Maybe I live in Königreich Romkerhall or the Principality of Sealand. You just don’t know.”

“The one thing you can be certain of is I definitely don’t live in New York.”

We would like to make clear that we continue to blog from Not New York.

On a more serious note, financial woes brought on by the pandemic, painful inflation and a generally difficult economy have attracted the criminally inclined to the petnapping trade, and as Maxwell pointed out to the Register, few people are held accountable for animal-related crimes. That includes darker endeavors like dog fighting and puppy/kitten mills.

“Sadly, animal cruelty in general is under-prosecuted, and very, very few actually end up resulting in jail time,” Maxwell said.

white cat on brown wooden shelf — A cat stays above the fray and surveys her surroundings from an elevated perch. Credit: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Sometimes pet thieves are opportunists who see a cat or dog who catches their fancy, or they believe might be worth money. Those cases often include people luring well-loved animals off porches and property with food.

Most, however, are people who intentionally target breeds that command high prices and are primarily responsible for what Maxwell says is a 40 percent spike in petnappings since early 2020. For felines that means Bengals, Savannahs, Ragdolls, Maine Coons, Norwegian Forest Cats and other breeds that can net the thief a solid payday for minimal effort.

“They’re going to steal your pedigree cat, your pedigree dog that’s worth thousands” and immediately flip the animal, Maxwell told the newspaper.

Social media, it turns out, is a double-edged sword.

While cops and animal welfare organizations warn people against showing off valuable pets online — and urge people to disable features like location tagging — the same platforms are often invaluable for retrieving stolen cats and dogs. Groups on sites like Reddit and Facebook help people find their well-loved four-legged family members and warn others when they identify resellers.

You can help keep your furry friends safe by making sure they’re microchipped, only allowing them outdoors when you’re there to accompany them, and keeping gates, doors and garages closed and locked.

Caught! Tip Leads Cops To Ohio Cat Killer

The suspect has been charged with a pair of felonies and remained jailed awaiting arraignment on Tuesday evening.

A 27-year-old Ohio man has been identified and arrested in connection with the cruel death of a cat in late January.

Police located Zhean Bai of Oxford, Ohio, thanks to a tip from the public and charged him with a pair of felonies. They say he’s the man seen in disturbing security camera footage from Jan. 24, when he chased an apparent stray cat into an apartment complex in Hamilton, Ohio. The footage shows Bai forcing the cat into a plastic bag and slamming it onto the ground.

The charges — prohibitions concerning companion animals and breaking and entering — are fifth-degree felonies under Ohio law. Bai faces up to two years in prison, $5,000 in fines and up to five years of probation if he’s convicted of both crimes.

After severely injuring the feline, Bai allegedly dumped the cat behind the building and fled. A dog warden found the cat, but a veterinarian made the decision to euthanize due to the extent of the cat’s injuries, including a broken spine and pelvis.

“This instance of horrific cruelty is unimaginable and will never be tolerated in this county,” Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones wrote in a statement to the media. “Anyone who treats an animal in such a cruel manner will always find a place in my jail.”

The investigation isn’t over. Police say they’re looking into the possibility that Bai may have been involved in other animal cruelty cases.

Bai was apparently concerned he’d be caught. The same cameras show him returning to the apartment complex — where he does not live — and scoping it out for security cameras. He was wearing the same shoes and jacket and had recently gotten a haircut, giving police and the public a better view of his face. Cops quickly released a second batch of images this week, imploring the public help them find the man.

Bai was held in Butler County jail pending arraignment on Tuesday evening. It wasn’t immediately clear if he’d retained an attorney.

This Man Broke A Cat’s Spine By Slamming It To The Ground. Help Police ID And Catch Him

The police are looking for the public’s help in identifying and tracking down a man seen in a disturbing video.

Cops are looking for the public’s help identifying a man who abused a cat, injuring the feline so badly it had to be euthanized.

The man chased the cat into an apartment complex in Hamilton, Ohio, on Jan. 24 at 9 p.m. He caught the cat, forced it into a plastic bag and then slammed the bag down hard on the stairwell, according to footage from security cameras the complex. He dumped the cat, still alive and suffering, behind the apartment complex and fled.

The cat was found by deputy dog wardens, according to local media, but had a fractured pelvis and spine and had to be euthanized.

ohioanimalabuser — A still image from Jan. 24. Police say the suspect returned last week to scope out security cameras. Credit: Butler County Sheriff’s Office.

In addition to being shockingly cruel, the suspect isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Cops say he doesn’t live in the complex, but returned there last week to look for surveillance cameras. In doing so, he gave the police a better look at his facial features and more images to release to the public.

Per the Hamilton Journal-News:

“In the new photos of the suspect, he is wearing the same coat and shoes, but has a recent hair cut, according to the BCSO.”

For those of you living in the Ohio area, details on how to contact the Butler County Sheriff’s Office are in the post below. Help them find this cruel man so he can be prosecuted and convicted.

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.

Texas Pols Secretly Plot Cat Slaughter: ‘The More The Public Knows, The Uglier It Gets’

Another day, another abhorrent plan to kill cats.

Unaware they were being recorded, elected leaders in a small Texas city let their imaginations run wild in a closed-door meeting about dealing with feral cat colonies.

One proposed mass poisoning to take out as many as 50 cats at a time. Another, perhaps fancying himself a mafia hit man, envisioned taking care of the city’s cat “problem” execution-style with a “.22 round to the back of the head.”

A third proposed dumping the bodies of the dead cats in an area the city already uses to dispose of unwanted animals.

“We have a location on this property that’s called deer heaven,” the committee member told colleagues at the Nov. 6 meeting. “I’m sure it could be kitty cat heaven too.”

Now the city council and wildlife advisory council of Granite Shoals, a city of about 5,100 in central Texas, are trying to explain themselves to an infuriated public, the local Humane Society and their own police, who rebuked them in a public statement that asserted their plans are illegal.

State and local laws “do not allow any cruelty to animals, including feral cats in our community,” police chief John Ortis wrote in a letter to the public.

The Hill Country Humane Society took the extraordinary step of “terminating its relationship” with the city, calling the committee’s plans “blatantly unethical and illegal” in a statement posted on Facebook.

“This recording reveals that not only was there an attempt to develop a plan to inhumanely shoot captured cats and dispose of their carcasses, but there was open discussion between members of the committee and the City Manager about the need to conceal such activities from the general public,” the Humane Society wrote.

Staff at the Humane Society said they’ll still take in stray cats from the city, but they’ve ended their official partnership.

A stray cat. Credit: Aleksandr Nadyojin/Pexels

Todd Holland, the committee chair, denied that his members wanted to keep details of their plans from the public and told local newspaper the Daily Trib that the committee was merely trying to work out the “intricate details” of how to handle a population of about 400 cats. It’s not clear how the city arrived at that number, and there’s been no mention of an official effort to get an accurate tally.

“It’s not like we’re a bunch of cowboys running wild,” Holland said.

But in the recording, committee members clearly discussed hiding details from the public, and the Daily Trib noted that the committee used the word “remove” interchangeably with “euthanize” in written materials detailing the plan, perhaps to soften the language or obscure the fact that the proposed solution was to kill the cats.

Granite Shoals Mayor Ron Munos called the recording “disturbing” and said the committee’s plan will not be put into practice.

“The city is not doing this,” he told the Daily Trib. “We’re not going out and killing cats.”

Here at PITB we feel like a broken record regularly referring back to the junk studies blaming cats for killing billions of birds annually, but the reason we do is because those studies have real-life consequences.

Ill-advised, unethical and illegal plans to eradicate stray cats wouldn’t be explored at municipal and county levels if elected leaders weren’t told that trap, neuter, return (TNR) programs do not work and that outdoor cats pose the most significant thread to local wildlife.

Likewise, we wouldn’t hear about schools sponsoring cat hunts for children or so-called conservationists gunning down entire stray colonies if a small but vocal group of ostensible scientists weren’t routinely publishing dubious studies making improbable and unsupportable claims about feline predatory impact.

In plain terms there’s been a concerted effort to paint domestic cats as dangerous, ruthless killing machines, the media hasn’t treated the claims with skepticism, and the result is a whole lot of cruelty and misery inflicted on innocent animals.

City councils, wildlife biologists, park rangers and others are not armed with the facts when they rely on those studies, and the result is bad policy and decision-making.

Stories like this one out of Texas have become more frequent over the past few years, and we suspect things will get a lot worse for cats without injecting some much-needed sanity and evidence-based solutions to counter the tidal wave of misinformation.