HUMANE ENFORCEMENT

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Reed Young, 46, of Fort Worth, chief cruelty officer for
the Humane Society of North Texas since 1991, and a deputy constable
for Tarrant County since 1993, was arrested the night of September
17 by Fort Worth city police, charged with staging two shooting incidents
during the preceding week, allegedly to draw attention to dogfighting.
On September 10, Young said, someone fired two shots into
the vacant passenger side of his truck as he drove into the humane society
parking lot. On September 14, Young said, he was responding to
a dogfighting complaint when someone shot twice into the driver’s side
of the truck, missing him but shattering his windshield. Flying glass
cut his forehead. Young said he shot back but didn’t hit a man he saw
running into a wooded area. Fellow HSNT investigator Debbie
Martin told Deanna Boyd of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she
and Young had investigated previous dogfighting complaints near
where the second shooting purportedly occurred, seized 15 pit bull terriers
in one raid there, and won conviction of an alleged dogfighter.
Fort Worth police sergeants T.J. Saye and Gerald Teague told Boyd
that ballistics and gunpowder residue tests showed the shots were all
fired from close range, with the same gun, and that the holes in
Young’s truck were not consistent with shots being fired at a moving
vehicle. Teague also said Young had admitted inventing the shooting
stories. Young was suspended by both the humane society and Tarrant
County, but attorney Don Feare, a Humane Society of North Texas
board member who is representing Young, told Veronica Alaniz of
the Dallas Morning News that Young did not confess and is not guilty.

Andrew Stonaker, animal control officer for Monroe
Township and Jamesburg, New Jersey, from October 1992 until he
was suspended September 29, 1997, has been charged by the
Middlesex SPCA with 32 criminal counts of disorderly conduct and 20
civil counts of the same charges, for alleged neglect of his duties
resulting in the deaths of two dogs. In Monroe Township, Stonaker
replaced Gary Alscheimer, who was dismissed for running over a
flock of geese with a county dump truck, then twisting the head off
one injured goose. “These are just two in a long series of abuses from
animal control officers in this state,” complained Associated Humane
Societies assistant director Roseann Trezza, faxing the details. “The
requirements for becoming an animal control officer here are abysmal,
and although we have been seeking a much more comprehensive training
course, we cannot get the legislature to act.” Worst, Trezza said,
“Even though an animal control officer has been found guilty of cruelty,
he can still be an animal control officer.”
Idaho 6th District Judge Randy Smith ruled on August 9
that Robert Fieber and Dotti Martin, owners of the former
Ligertown exotic game farm near Lava Hot Springs, should not have
been deprived of 27 lion/tiger hybrids who were confiscated by Idaho
wildlife authorities after 14 others escaped in 1995 and were shot by
police––at least not as a condition of their probation after they were
convicted of multiple cruelty charges for keeping the ligers in unfit
conditions. They could still be deprived of the ligers through civil procedure,
seeking to recoup some of the costs of demolishing the
Ligertown facilities. The 27 surviving ligers have been kept ever since
the 1995 incident at the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary in Angeles
National Forest, California. Smith remanded the cruelty case back to
magisterial court for re-sentencing.