ANIMAL CRUELTY LAWS: Weak and Unenforced

On Sept. 12, 2011, Milan Rysa, an illegal immigrant tossed his three-year-old Shar-Pei dog out of his third-story apartment window in Queens, NY.  The dog died upon impact, barely missing two women pedestrians before it hit the street. I have been closely following the progress of Rysa’s case since that night.  Rysa, a bodybuilder who worked at a local gym, was arrested the night of the incident, although he initially said he was asleep when the dog died and had nothing to do with it. He was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation and then put in prison. He eventually pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment March 15, 2012 and was given a sentence of 364 days in prison. He served just three-quarters of his sentence.

Milan Rysa and "Brooklyn"

 Rysa then became subject to Immigration and Customs Enforcement action.  He is awaiting a court date to find out if he will be deported to his native Czech Republic. The message Rysa’s experience sends to the world is that in America you can murder an animal that you own, serve a brief prison sentence and then be released. If the American animal abuse laws are inadequate, it is largely because they are archaic and not prioritized by individual states. 

  

"PRIMO"

 Consider what happened in my own home town, New Orleans.  Primo was a six-year-old Belgian Malinois who served in the K-9 division of the New Orleans Police Department. In May, 2009, his handler, Officer Jason Lewis, left Primo unattended in a police vehicle in extreme heat.  The dog evidently struggled to escape the vehicle, but weakened and died of heat stroke.  Prior to dying, the dog was taken to a veterinarian, where he suffered three seizures before succumbing. Photos of the vehicle (above, left) in which Primo died show a torn up interior, likely the result of Primo’s desperate attempt to escape. It should be noted that the necropsy report by the Louisiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory shows Primo’s temperature upon arrival at the veterinary clinic was 109.8 degrees.

Lewis was appropriately fired.  But he appealed his termination and in May, 2012 the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal in New Orleans said it found no evidence that officer Jason Lewis was negligent in his care for Primo, his 6-year-old Belgian Malinois, and Lewis was reinstated to his NOPD position.

Also in May, 2009, veteran K-9 NOPD officer Sgt. Randy Lewis falsified a permission slip to use another police dog named Phantom in a security search of a shuttered New Orleans hospital.  The dog, who was not technically supposed to be on this detail, broke free from Lewis while in the hospital and fell 17 floors down an elevator shaft.  Lewis, court records indicate, then tried to cover up the details of the dog’s death.  He was charged with malfeasance in office, but remarkably, he was acquitted.

These disgusting examples of animal abuse and neglect may seem as though they are isolated incidents, but the hard truth is that animal mistreatment is epidemic in our culture. The Humane Society of America reports that most victims (65%) are dogs.  It is further reported that 71 per cent of human domestic violence victims report that their abuser also targets their animals. Forty-seven states currently have felony provisions for animal abuse. Those that do not have such laws are Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The problem is that these laws are weakly enforced, and individual judges can dismiss cases, which is exactly what happened with Sgt. Randy Lewis. The felony animal abuse laws are unevenly prosecuted nationwide.  Perhaps this rather nonchalant view of animal abuse will explain why in 2010, there were only 16 reported cases of animal abuse in Louisiana.  In New York, where Milan Rysa murdered his dog, there were 100 cases, still a fraction of the number of animals that were most likely abused in the state that year.

Some perspective:  In Louisiana, the penalty for purse-snatching is two to 20 years in prison. But, as stated above, the penalty for allowing a dog to die under the cruelest conditions in a hot car with windows closed was…well, there was no penalty. In New York, the penalty for breaking windows in someone’s house is imprisonment for up to 10 years or a fine of not more than $15,000.00 or 3 times the amount of the destruction or injury, whichever is greater, or both imprisonment and a fine. But, in the case of Milan Rysa, the penalty for murdering a dog is less than a year in prison, and no fine. There are many states, most notably Kentucky and New Mexico, in which owners do not even have to forfeit their animals if they abuse them and get caught.  They get to keep them and most likely abuse them further. There is no consistency from state to state regarding animal abuse laws and penalties and many states almost ignore the problem. In Iowa, for example, police officers are not even required to report animal abuse that they witness, or to intervene to try to stop the abuse. You can beat your dog up in front of an Iowa cop and he or she has no obligation to stop you.

In 2012, the Animal Legal Defense Fund issued a report, "U.S. Animal Protection Laws Rankings," in which it ranked every state in the U.S. as to its animal abuse laws and enforcement.  Even in Illinois, which it ranked in the top five states for animal protection, it revealed that if a citizen is convicted of animal abuse, he or she does not have to give up their animal. Further, just like Iowa, if police officers witness animal abuse, they do not have “an affirmative duty to enforce animal protection laws.”   Other states have animal protection laws that lack definitions, so enforcement of the laws becomes arbitrary.  Still other states lack basic laws to protect animals from obvious mistreatment. In New Mexico, for example, remarkably there are no provisions for sexual assault of an animal. We humans have to start taking action in our individual states to strengthen these laws.  Here is what you can do:

1.      Contact your state legislators and express your concern about animal protection. Many legislators do not take much of an interest in animal protection because it is not a hot button topic that gains them notoriety or votes. You have to push them to act. WE ALL HAVE TO BECOME ACTIVISTS AND LOBBYISTS.  Animals are depending on us.
2.      If you suspect or witness animal cruelty or neglect, report the abuse to the Humane Society, document what you have seen or suspected and be willing to testify against the perpetrator.
3.      Work within the system to strengthen existing animal protection laws in your state. Start locally, move to the state level and then the national level, via groups that are already involved with animal protection.
4.      Know the laws in your state so that you can know what is missing. Click here to learn the specifics of the laws in your state, as listed by the ASPCA.    Also, know what laws are pending.  You can find this out through an interactive map

6.      at Born Free USA, a national non-profit organization that lobbies for the care and protection of animals. 

 5.  Contact the media to get coverage for instances of extreme cruelty and neglect. If you contact a local television station, ask to speak directly with the news director and be brief, concise and specific.  Offer to be interviewed, if necessary. 

Most importantly, adopt animals that you can take care of properly. Encourage people you trust to do the same. If you truly love animals, now is the time for us all to mobilize against animal cruelty.  Never give up and never stop caring.

THE DIRTY SECRETS OF THE DANZIGER BRIDGE

Headlines coast to coast screamed “Blagojevich Guilty” after a Chicago jury deliberated for nine days and found former Governor Rod Blagojevich guilty on 17 corruption counts. In Florida, the seemingly endless Casey Anthony child murder trial also made headlines after the defendant’s mother tried to explain away her computer searches for “chloroform,” with a straight face. But in New Orleans, all eyes were on the Federal courthouse as a jury was seated for the Danziger Bridge trial. What, no Nancy Grace, Joy Behar, Wolf Blitzer or even Dr. Drew Pinsky reports? Nothing. A quick search of the NY Times turns up nada. The Washington Post? Well, if by chance you clicked on “National” news at the top of the home page, and the once you got there, scrolled way down and clicked on “More National News,” and then once you got to that page, scrolled down to the 27th headline, you’d find an AP wire story about the Danziger Bridge story.

You get the idea. Danziger is not a term in the national consciousness. But here in New Orleans, the courthouse was packed on day one of the trial that has become so iconic to the Hurricane Katrina event, that people actually drive to the bridge just to see where it all happened. So, if you’re reading this from Salt Lake City, or Poughkeepsie, or Greensboro, maybe I should briefly recount for you what happened. At least as much as we know. What is known is that on Sept. 4, 2005, just days after the storm, two men were killed by gunfire on the bridge and four others were wounded. One of the dead was a 40-year-old disabled man who was shot in the back. To hear the accused cops (above, left) tell it, there was a distress call from the bridge area suggesting cops were fired upon. Nine other cops piled in a rented truck and rushed to the scene. What happened after that is unclear, except we know the two men were killed and four others wounded.

Now five police officers are on trial for civil rights violations, unjustified shootings and for covering up their activities. Five former cops have already entered guilty pleas to the cover up and will testify against their one-time colleagues. A detective goes on trial later in the summer. Anybody who lives in New Orleans knows something very bad happened on the bridge that day, and just about everybody believes the cops are guilty – except other cops, who never believe their brethren are guilty. Federal prosecutors allege the attacks on the bridge were unprovoked. In fact, this case may have simply faded away had the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI not become involved in the investigation. But they did. It’s a complex series of events that led to this trial. Listen to two Times-Picayune crime reporters explain the order of what happened:

New Orleans is often aptly referred to as “The city that care forgot.” So true. The story just isn’t as “sexy” as say a Rodney King police abuse case out of L.A. back in 1991. It doesn’t have the staying power of the 1997 NYC case of citizen Abner Louima, who was sexually brutalized with a plunger handle by two cops. This is New Orleans. We made it on the media map in 2005 because of the largest natural disaster in the history of the United States. But attention spans are short and news has very little longevity in our new tech world culture. So Katrina is over. Way over. And stories like the Danziger Bridge case don’t really get much CNN/MSNBC/Huffington Post/CBS/NBC/ABC/FOX attention. Almost none, you might say.

It’s tough to compete with Blagojevich, who’s still rocking those 1970’s junior high school bangs. And Casey Anthony, the innocent-looking white girl who may have killed her baby and then gone out partying? Well, that’s ratings gold for networks like HLN. They’ve even got Dr. Drew Pinsky covering it – he’s an addiction specialist and nobody in this case is claiming addiction problems. Go figure. In his new book about Katrina, former Mayor Ray Nagin (above, right) is all hot and bothered about police corruption during and after the storm. But oddly enough, while he was mayor, the words “Danziger Bridge” scarcely crossed his lips. Although the cops in question are both black and white, the victims were all black. Where is Jesse Jackson? Where is Al Sharpton? Where’s the NAACP? Where is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? The ACLU?

Where is the public outrage? I believe it is stuck back in 2005. “Katrina fatigue” is not just an expression. In New Orleans we can barely look back. Around the rest of the country, Katrina is a historical term now. In some ways we in New Orleans still see the storm in present tense, although certainly it fades as time moves on. But really, if you are in New Mexico, or Connecticut, or Maine or Montana, do you care about Katrina now? No. To you, the Danziger Bridge could just as easily be a place in a fiction novel as it could a real blood-soaked crossing in Louisiana. I do not anticipate a high profile for the trial outside of Louisiana, but at the same time, I know that if the accused cops walk free, the racial implications for the whole country could be dire. Stay tuned.