Animal Cruelty: Exploited, Manipulated, Poorly Responded To Crime

All animal organizations that say they oppose animal cruelty must immediately stop conducting their own investigations and instead become advocates for a proper and widespread response to animal cruelty by public law enforcement.

Violent crimes can happen any time, any place. Only public law enforcement is available 24 hours a day most everywhere to respond. No one else is as capable of responding to crimes in progress.

Crimes in progress, especially violent crimes, must receive an appropriate, timely response.

If domestic violence, for example, is not responded to by public law enforcement, and if responding to domestic violence is left in the hands of special teams and private nonprofit organizations, there will be an explosion of domestic violence. If police do not respond appropriately to in progress domestic violence calls and if the public relies upon private organizations and special teams to do investigations, practically every domestic violence offender will never get arrested and the crime will grow exponentially.

Dog fighting and animal cruelty are poorly responded to when in progress, and rarely responded to appropriately when on viewed by public law enforcement. The advocacy needed for this to change has been nonexistent for decades now. If violent crimes, including animal cruelty and dog fighting, are not responded to properly when in progress, and if they are ignored when police on view these crimes, then the crimes grow unchecked no matter how many investigations, even if they are effective, which often they are not, that an animal organization may conduct

What is needed is for public law enforcement at large to respond appropriately to 911 calls for animal cruelty and dog fighting, and to respond appropriately when on viewing animal cruelty and dog fighting, and for animal organizations and animal advocates, to ensure this happens. Every effort that diverts from this being achieved benefits animal abusers and dog fighters. Too many animal advocates are only interested in how animal cruelty can further their careers and how it can enrich themselves.

Most humane investigators do not have law enforcement powers, which makes their investigations toothless at best. Many are the times that animal abusers and dog fighters move their animals to another location after getting paid a visit by a humane investigator, whether they are armed or not. Those that do have law enforcement powers - whether they are employed by private sector nonprofit organizations or are assigned by police departments to investigate animal cruelty -  do little more than give larger public law enforcement an excuse to continue doing little to nothing about animal cruelty and dog fighting. Token police teams assigned by a police department or by an animal organization to investigate animal cruelty are little more than public relations ploys that enable police departments and other public law enforcement to continue poorly responding to animal cruelty related crimes.

If animal organizations want to help, they must become advocates for police to respond appropriately and in a widespread manner to animal cruelty and dog fighting. They must stop investigating animal cruelty. They can, however, assist police departments in removing animals from crime scenes if needed and by providing shelter if needed for the animals until a judge decides if the seizure is justified. Because this does not keep the illusion going that certain animal organizations are the answer to animal cruelty, this does not happen. Humane investigators can assist people that need help caring for their animals in the many instances where such help is needed but does not constitute criminal animal abuse.

The dysfunctional status quo means dog fighters have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than ever getting arrested for dog fighting. Few animals abusers are arrested despite animal cruelty being a common occurring widespread crime.
Sadistic people continue burning, starving, torturing, fighting, beating, and mutilating animals with rarely anything being done to stop them.

No anti domestic violence or anti drunk driving organization conducts their own criminal investigations. Instead, they advocate for police to respond broadly and appropriately to those crimes. If they investigated these crimes on their own and did not hold police accountable, domestic violence and drunk driving would be out of control.

What is needed is for public law enforcement at large to respond appropriately to calls for animal cruelty and dog fighting, and to respond appropriately when on viewing animal cruelty and dog fighting. Animal organizations must advocate to make this happen. Everything else, token anti animal abuse police teams, humane investigators, nonprofit animal organizations' anti cruelty investigations, and so forth, are only ineffective window dressing that maintains a dysfunctional status quo.

The priority for all crimes, animal cruelty, dog fighting, domestic violence, battery and so forth, is for a timely and appropriate police response when these crimes are in progress. Failing to respond appropriately to in progress crimes and crimes that are on viewed by law enforcement, including animal cruelty and dog fighting, means missing the most critically important opportunities for stopping these crimes.

Is it ethical for a private nonprofit organization to investigate any crime, including animal cruelty, when the public already pays through their taxes for public law enforcement to perform this task?  If public law enforcement is not properly doing their job in responding to a crime, including for animal cruelty, then it is the responsibility for an organization concerned about animal cruelty to ensure that that there is a better police response. No organization should use the poor police response as the excuse for why they should be the ones investigating a crime. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The poor police response is exploited by a number of animal organizations, who use this opportunity to present themselves as the answer to animal cruelty. By presenting themselves as the answer to animal cruelty, they create a false narrative that generates money and publicity for themselves.

No animal organization, even if they were far more successful and competent than they are now at responding to animal cruelty, can come anywhere close in effectiveness to what public law enforcement can achieve.

To repeat the same message said for decades now to these organizations, only to fall on deliberately deaf ears -  help animals, stop investigating animal cruelty and instead be advocates that fight for the police to respond appropriately.