Friday, July 11, 2008

Not of this nation, barely of this world

Louisiana is the kind of place where people get baited like animals, and animals get treated like . . . bait.

From the Baiting Humans Like Animals Department,
this from New Orleans City Business:

A pack of Kool cigarettes, a can of Budweiser and a box of Boston Baked Beans sat on the dashboard of an unlocked car with the windows rolled down at 1732 Canal St.

Somewhere nearby two New Orleans Police Department officers watched and waited for someone to reach into the bait car and snatch the items.

They wouldn’t have to wait long, as the police parked the car just one block away from a homeless encampment under the Claiborne Avenue overpass, where dozens of desperate, hungry and addicted people lived in a makeshift village of tents.

The first arrest was made at 12:25 p.m. June 10 when police say the initial suspect took the bait and stole a can of beer. The second arrest was made at 4:05 p.m. when police say a second suspect took the cigarettes, beer and candy.

For stealing less than $6 in items, the police charged the two homeless men with simple burglary, a felony that can carry up to 12 years in prison. Neither suspect had any prior arrests in Orleans Parish.

A month later, the men remain in Orleans Parish Prison awaiting court dates and the possibility they will spend the better part of the next decade in state prison.

“I don’t know what the policing justification is for such an action,” said Pamela Metzger, associate professor of law at Tulane University Law School. “But on a fundamental human level, it smacks of a meanness, a pettiness, a spitefulness that has no place in a city as broken as this one. It’s a way of manufacturing offenses that may not have otherwise existed.”


(snip)

Not only does it take police officers off the street, but it clogs the courts and forces public defenders and the district attorney to use their limited resources and manpower to litigate “trivial offenses” instead of focusing efforts on more serious cases like homicide, said Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

“People are still dying left and right and yet we’re playing games with baked beans and Kool cigarettes,” Quigley said. “The police officers who did this should be personally embarrassed and their superiors and the elected officials who knew about this should go to confession.”

The NOPD did not respond to requests for comment, but Superintendent Warren Riley has previously defended the practice of arresting people for minor crimes as a useful way of catching habitual offenders.

At a legislative committee hearing in October, Riley said officers will arrest someone for a minor offense such as trespassing if that person has a history of burglary arrests.

But during the car sting, officers not only arrested six people with no prior arrests, they also charged them with felonies.
AND NOW, FROM THAT garden spot of the Deep South, Baton Rouge, we have this dispatch, courtesy of the Using House Pets as Bait Department and The Advocate:

Two men were arrested Wednesday after they allegedly stood by laughing as their pit bull ate a live kitten.

Jeremy Johnson, 17, and Travis Johnson, 23, were arrested in a vacant lot in the 4900 block of Bradley Street after 911 dispatchers received an anonymous tip about the pair, a Baton Rouge police arrest affidavit says.

When police and animal control officers arrived at 11:20 a.m., they saw Jeremy Johnson holding his pet pit bull’s leash while the dog consumed a kitten, according to police spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely and the affidavit.

Animal control officers had to pull the pit bull off the kitten, McKneely said. The officers located another kitten that had been mauled nearby in the grass.

Jeremy Johnson told officers “he was letting the pit bull take care of the kittens because he doesn’t like cats and thinks there are too many of them loose in the area,” McKneely said.


(snip)

The Johnsons, both of 4917 Bradley St., were booked into Parish Prison on two counts of felony aggravated cruelty to animals and one count of criminal trespassing.

Bond was set for both men at $7,500, booking documents show. Their relationship to each other was unclear Thursday.

State law says, in part, that aggravated cruelty to animals includes the torturing, maiming or mutilating any living animal “intentionally or with criminal negligence.”

If convicted, the Johnsons could pay a fine ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 or spend from one to 10 years in prison, or both.

HOW MUCH you want to bet these monsters get off with a slap on the wrist?

Let me tell you a story that explains why I think that.

About three years ago, our elderly schnoodle, Phideaux, had a stroke. Without a second thought, we rushed him to the vet and, after a couple of hundred dollars worth of treatment, he recovered and lived another year. He was 16 when he died, and we miss him desperately still.

About the same time in Louisiana, another dog had a stroke. It was the pet of a friend's sister and brother-in-law, who is a professional kind of guy.

Seeing the dog in distress, the brother-in-law acted quickly. He took the poor creature out back and shot it.

THERE ARE many things I miss about my home state. There are many more I don't miss at all.

No comments: