Tag: animal cruelty

Maryland Roommates File Lawsuit After Police Shot Their Dog During Alleged Illegal Home Search

“That’s what happens when you don’t answer questions,” a Prince George’s County police officer said as Erica Umana’s dog lay on the ground, paralyzed and bleeding out.

Minutes earlier, on a summer day in 2021, officers had shot Umana’s dog, a boxer mix named Hennessy, during a chaotic confrontation inside Umana’s apartment.

Now Umana and her roommates—Erika Sanchez, Dayri Benitez, and Brandon Cuevas—have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Prince George’s County Police Department and several of its officers, saying the police had no right to enter their apartment, shoot their dog, and detain them. The lawsuit seeks over $16 million for allegedly subjecting them to excessive force, unlawful search and seizure, and false arrest.

“This case is an outrage. It is disgusting, disgraceful, and despicable,” William Murphy, an attorney representing the roommates, said in a press release Monday. “These officers outright abused and mistreated our clients, lied to unlawfully break into their house, manhandled them illegally, and shot their dog. And in utter disregard for the severity of their intolerable behavior, they laughed about it.”

The incident began on June 2, 2021, when Prince George’s County police officers arrived at an apartment complex in Landover Hills in response to a 911 call from a woman claiming two dogs had allegedly jumped on her and bit her.

Prince George’s County Cpl. Jason Ball encountered Sanchez sitting outside of the apartments, but she refused to answer any questions. Ball then threatened to arrest Sanchez for trespassing if she didn’t leave. On body camera footage, Ball said into his radio that he believed Sanchez lived in the apartment complex but that he was about to arrest her anyway because she refused to answer his questions—the first of several retaliatory threats and comments from Ball.

Sanchez walked off, and Ball and his partner went to knock on the door of the apartment where Sanchez, Umana, and the other lawsuit plaintiffs lived. No one answered.

“This would be open by now, by the way, if it wasn’t…,” Ball said to his partner, trailing off and tapping his body camera. “I used to open them all the time.” 

“Times have changed,” Ball’s partner responded.

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‘No money would ever tempt me to kill my XL Bully’: Furious dog owners blast government £200 ‘puppy scrappage scheme’ to euthanise their pets – as charities face an impossible task to rehome animals before December 31 deadline

Livid Bully XL owners are refusing to accept a £200 Government handout to euthanise their soon-to-be-banned pets, branding the plan ‘absolutely disgusting’.

The breed will be banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act by the end of the year, following a spate of recent fatal and horrific attacks. 

Owners can apply to have their pets exempt from the crackdown – which means they would have to pay £92.40 for a certificate and the dog would need to be microchipped and neutered, among other rules.

The second option would be to have their dogs put down, with the government offering £200 in compensation to these owners. 

But news of the measures this week triggered fury from Bully owners, who branded the move a ‘puppy scrappage scheme’. 

Fuming Bully XL owner Ashley Oxley from Brighton told MailOnline: ‘No money would ever tempt me into putting my girl down she’s fine the way she is and that’s how it’s staying can’t believe in this generation this kind of brutality is even allowed.’ 

Mother-of-three Dani Harland added: ‘This breaks my heart. I own an XL Bully and I would never ever even dream of putting her down. I find this absolutely disgusting that they [the government] are even offering to pay people money to have their dogs put to sleep.’

The outcry comes as animal charities today warned they face an impossible task of trying to rehome hundreds of Bully XLs stuck in rescue centres before the December 31 deadline, after which it will become illegal to rehome, breed, or sell the dogs.

Mel Kermode, operations manager of Freshfields Animal Rescue in Liverpool, said: ‘It is a desperate race against time to try and save these dogs. The clock is very much ticking,’ 

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Fauci NIH lab infected bats with Wuhan coronavirus, obtained from zoo near Camp David, report

A15-minute drive from the Camp David presidential retreat, a low-rated zoo gave the National Institutes of Health several bats to infect with a coronavirus from the same Chinese lab that some federal agencies believe is responsible for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, according to a new investigation and published research.

The White Coat Waste Project, which fights taxpayer funding of “wasteful government animal experiments,” said Monday it’s using Freedom of Information Act requests to get more details about the taxpayer-funded experiments documented in a 2018 paper in the journal Viruses.

Former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci oversaw the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana when it did the research with bats from Maryland’s Catoctin Wildlife Preserve, whose Director of Animal Health Laurie Hahn is a former NIH “lead veterinary technician” for animal research.

The Viruses paper, authored by Montana lab researchers and Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborator Ralph Baric, of the University of North Carolina, determined that the “SARS-like WIV1-coronavirus” first isolated from Chinese rufous horseshoe bats could not cause a “robust infection” in the 12 Egyptian fruit bats from the zoo. Four were euthanized and tested.

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Tribal officer who shot, killed a deer is no longer deputized

The Pokagon Band Tribal Police officer who shot and killed a deer in Van Buren County is no longer deputized. 

Officials confirmed that the officer will no longer have any authority working with the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office, and will now only have the authority to enforce laws on tribal land.

The incident on Friday sparked outrage in the town of Lawrence, as the officer was filmed forcing a deer to the ground and then shooting it in the neck. It happened after tribal police were assisting county law enforcement in serving an unrelated arrest warrant.

Neighbors say they knew the deer as “Annie,” and while they say she was a wild deer, they say she was remarkably friendly to people, and was loved throughout the area.

“It was amazing. It was one of the most coolest things we’d ever seen. She let us pet her. She let my three-year-old pet her, and, you know, she kind of wandered around our yard, but she always came back to see us. She did no harm,” said Amanda Beck, a resident. 

Community members have formed the online group “Justice for Annie,” and have been sharing memories along with voicing concern over how law enforcement handled the incident. A neighbor who witnessed the incident says the officer shot the deer in front of the family who originally found her when she was injured, and provided her aid. 

“You’ve not only traumatized everybody in the family who watched it happen 10 feet from them, but what could have happened with you firing that firearm 10 feet from a house, 10-foot from a busy highway?” questioned neighbor Theresa Braswell.

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Senior Pentagon Official Charged for Involvement in Dogfighting Ring

Senior Pentagon official Frederick Moorefield was arrested Thursday and charged with furthering a dogfighting ring.

Moorefield, who served as the deputy chief information officer for command, control, and communications for the Secretary of Defense’s Chief Information Office (CIO), was arrested for promoting and furthering a dogfighting ring alongside a longtime friend, Mario Flythe, who allegedly admitted participation in the dog fighting.

The Washington Post reported:

Investigators found battery jumper cables, which allegedly were used to execute dogs at Moorefield’s house, along with five pit bull-type dogs at his house and five pit bull-type dogs at Flythe’s house, court records show. The FBI, the Department of Agriculture and other local and federal agencies raided both houses on Sept. 6, according to a federal affidavit, finding weighted collars and heavy metal chains used to increase fighting dogs’ strength. Authorities said they also found “an apparatus that is used for involuntarily inseminating female dogs” and stains “consistent with bloodstains from dogfights.”

Both men were released after being arraigned.

Lt. Commander Tim Gorman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday that the Department of Defense was “aware of the criminal complaint” against Moorefield.

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Charges filed against Broken Arrow police officer over dog attack caught on camera

Officer William Roy Golden is charged with cruelty to animals and acts resulting in gross injury/outraging public decency. 

An arrest warrant was issued Friday along with the charges.

The charges are related to an incident caught on camera Aug. 28 where an officer is seen following a dog around before using pepper spray on it.

The video was shared thousands of times before an investigation was launched.

The arrest report claims that Golden tazed the dog 8 times, pepper-sprayed the dog, and hit it in its head.

He is also accused of unholstering his gun.

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Outrage after missing Missouri dog shot by police, placed in ditch

Parker, an elderly dog from Dexter, Missouri, ran away from home during the thunderstorms Saturday night. A family who wanted to return him to his owner found him. Within hours, the Stoddard County Sheriff’s Office officers picked up Parker, drove him out to Otter Slough Park, shot him, and left him in a ditch.

“We don’t have any way of taking care of a dog,“ an officer told the dog’s owner, Bryan Pennington.

Pennington posted a video of the interaction on his Facebook page, calling out the Sheriff’s department for finding and shooting his dog. He wrote, “Parker showed no aggression towards him or anyone during this. I saved Parker from being shot nine years ago in Doniphan, Missouri, because the guy couldn’t afford to feed him.”

Pennington continued, portraying Parker not just as a pet but as a friend. He praised Parker’s skill in catching more mice and moles than any other cat.

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New documentary ‘proves’ building offshore wind farms does kill whales

The increase in whale, dolphin, and other cetacean deaths off the East Coast of the United States since 2016 is not due to the construction of large industrial wind turbines, U.S. government officials say.

Their scientists have done the research, they say, to prove that whatever is killing the whales is completely unrelated to the wind industry. 

But now, a new documentary, “Thrown To The Wind,” by director and producer Jonah Markowitz, which I executive produced, proves that the US government officials have been lying.

The film documents surprisingly loud, high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones. And it shows that the wind industry’s increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths

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Government kills hundreds of Minnesota wolves to protect ranchers’ profits

It’s not easy being a wolf in northern Minnesota.

Every year dozens of the animals die of starvation, disease, parasites, vehicle traffic and poaching.

But the No. 1 killer of Minnesota wolves may come as a surprise: agents of the federal government, acting with the full force of the law.

In 2022, there were 174 documented wolf deaths in Minnesota, according to the latest state Department of Natural Resources data. Of those, 142 were killed by a relatively obscure arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture called the Wildlife Services division.

Wildlife Services is tasked with mitigating conflicts between humans and wild animals. In Minnesota, the agency’s staffers answer complaints from ranchers who lose cattle and other livestock to wolf predation. The agency documents and verifies those complaints, and looks for non-lethal ways to protect threatened livestock, like wolf-proof fencing.

If those options don’t work, the agency traps and kills wolves deemed responsible for the loss. USDA officers kill more wolves in Minnesota than in all other states combined, according to the program’s annual reports.

That work is effectively a government handout to ranchers, who receive publicly funded protection for their privately held livestock. The ranchers also receive cash compensation from state taxpayers for their lost cattle, which in 2022 totaled $100,000 for 78 wolf predation claims, or an average of about $1,300 per claim.

While individual ranchers can experience significant losses if wolves repeatedly target their cows, the overall impact on the state’s cattle population is negligible. There are about 2.2 million cows in the state, according to USDA data. The five or six dozen documented and verified wolf kills in a given year amount to a few thousandths of 1 percent of the total population.

But the USDA’s actions in response inflict a steep toll upon Minnesota’s wolves. The 142 kills amount to fully 5% of the state’s estimated wolf population.

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Officials bust illegal lab containing 20 infectious agents, hundreds of lab mice

Local and federal authorities have shut down what seems to be an illegal medical lab hidden in a California warehouse that contained nearly 1,000 laboratory mice, hundreds of unknown chemicals, refrigerators and freezers, vials of biohazardous materials, including blood, incubators, and at least 20 infectious agents, including SARS-CoV-2, HIV, and a herpes virus.

According to NBC News affiliate KSEE of Fresno, local authorities were first tipped off to the unlicensed facility when a local code enforcement officer noticed that a garden hose was illegally attached to the back of the building. That led city officials to obtain a search warrant to inspect the warehouse, which was supposed to only be used for storage.

According to court documents obtained by NBC News, city officials inspected the warehouse, located in Reedley, southeast of Fresno, on March 3. County health officials then inspected the facility on March 16. What they found reportedly shocked them.

“This is an unusual situation. I’ve been in government for 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba told KSEE.

There were rooms with “vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. ” “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.” There was also a room full of mice.

According to the court documents, the mice were kept in inhumane conditions. More than 175 were found dead, and the city took possession of the remaining animals in April and euthanized 773. Substances collected from the lab were given to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing. The agency detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, the documents read.

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