Violence vs. animal law enforcement
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:
NAIROBI–Nairobi police fired teargas to disperse
demonstrators on May 18, 2005, and Masai leader Ben Koisaba
threatened to “mobilize Masai to invade Delamere ranches in Nakuru to
press for the re-arrest and prosecution” of Tom Gilbert Patrick
Cholmon-deley, 37, a day after Philip Murgor, Kenya Director of
Public Prosecution, dropped a murder charge filed against
Cholmondeley on April 28 for killing Kenya Wildlife Service ranger
Samson ole Sisina with one of a volley of five shots fired on April
19.
Cholmondeley, an honorary KWS game ranger himself, claimed
Sisina shot first, and said he had mistaken Sisina for a bandit, as
Sisina led an undercover KWS raid on an illegal wildlife
slaughterhouse at one of the Cholmondeley family ranches.
Cholmon-deley remained under investigation in connection with the
slaughterhouse.
Cholmondeley’s grandfather Hugh Cholmondeley, the third
Baron Delamere, visited Kenya to hunt in 1895, decided to emigrate
from Britain to raise cattle, and established the family land and
livestock empire that Tom Cholmondeley now directs.
The Sisina slaying followed the late March murder of a
Swaziland ranger identified only as Mandla.
“Poachers encountered by the off-duty ranger from the Hlane
Royal Game Park were filling their truck with dozens of carcasses of
impala, warthog and other animals shot at a remote part of the
park,” wrote James Hall of the Inter Press Service. “They shot the
ranger also, whose body lay undetected for two days until other park
workers happened across him. National political figures kept quiet
about the killing, but Big Game Parks,” the agency that runs the
Swaziland wildlife reserves, “posted a large reward for information
leading to the killers’ capture.”
South African National SPCA inspector Roland Fivaz
encountered threats of violence on May 31 while trying to arrest four
male students at the Edgewood campus of the University of
KwaZulu-Natal for allegedly killing a cat in a microwave oven two
weeks earlier. The arrests “were prevented by a mob of students who
protested against the arrest of their peers. Fivaz was forced to
leave,” wrote Bhavna Sookha of the Durban Daily News.
Fivaz said witnesses had received death threats, and that he
received a telephoned death threat that evening.
“The case will now be handed over to the police, who will
follow up on the information I have received,” Fivaz told Sookha.
Addressing a comparable case of menacing an animal law
enforcement officer, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Jack Cook on May 27
sentenced Chu Luu Linville, 57, of Loxahatchee, Florida, to serve
50 months in prison followed by 10 years on probation.
“Linville was convicted in March of solicitation to commit
first-degree murder,” explained Palm Beach Post staff writer Larry
Keller. “A jury concluded that she tried to hire an undercover
sheriff’s deputy to kill animal care and control officer Tammie
Crawford in October 2003. Linville even drew a map showing the canal
where she wanted Crawford’s body dumped so it would be eaten by
alligators. “Linville has a long history of skirmishes with animal
care and control officers, including Crawford,” wrote Keller, “who
have cited her numerous times for animal neglect and for letting
animals run loose.”
