IN JAIL:
Travis Edwards, a police officer in Sparta, GA, was arrested on Monday and charged with dogfighting and cruelty to animals. “Several” Pitbulls were seized from his home – no word on their fate.
FIRED:
Jose Martinez, an animal welfare supervisor in Albuquerque, NM was terminated after his name and city e-mail address turned up on a Pitbull breeding website. The city says running the breeding business on city time “violate[s] employee policies and Albuquerque’s Animal Humane and Ethical Treatment rules.”
UNDER INVESTIGATION:
An unnamed male ACO in Wytheville, VA has allegedly been illegally trapping cats for years. He then takes the trapped cats to the local pound where he kills more than 95% of all cats. Police are promising changes in paperwork.
NO ACTION:
A community task force in DeKalb Co, GA has determined that staff members at the pound disregard the procedures manual, leave puppies and kittens to die, and kill feral cats “by holding them down with a foot on the back, sometimes breaking their bones”. The task force blames understaffing. Shouldn’t these people join Officer Edwards in jail?
Are you kidding? No way–he should come apply for a job at MAS–he’d fit right in–wouldn’t even need training!
“Are you kidding? No way–he should come apply for a job at MAS–he’d fit right in–wouldn’t even need training!”
Agreed.
Man some of these are kind of disturbing. Its good that they are getting charged for it. And I dont think that Jose did anything firable, unless ofc he was selling the pitbulls to fight them (I will reserve judgement for now).
…they’d fit right in…
Martinez was using his city email address as a contact for puppy sales.
Here’s the listing, BTW:
Spartan Staffords
Jose Martinez
2300 Gardenia sw
Albuquerque NM 87105
Phone: 505-319-8241
E-Mail: jamartinez@cabq.gov
Breeding Staffordshire Bull Terriers, true to the breed and standards
From this site:
http://www.mydogbreeders.com/dog-breeders-by-location/new-mexico/
Which also lists, in NM, Italian Greyhound, Aussie, doodle, etc. breeders. Quite the rogue’s gallery.
Now, the only WRONGDOING I can discern is using the work email for personal business, on what appears to be a very small scale.
Can you imagine the rivers of blood in the gutters as all employers apply the ax to all employees who are guilty of this particular sin?
And clearly a dogfighter! The newz sed “pitbull breeding operation.” Wink wink, nudge nudge, you know what that Mexican was getting up to. Producing such abused victims as this Canadian dog:
http://www.magnumstaffords.com/our-males.php
As for anything ILLEGAL, well, under the phone book of deranged regulations that Albuquerque calls its “humane” laws, I’m sure they will find many, many violations, since the very non-act of refraining from surgically sterilizing even one of his pets is defined as an act of cruelty.
And Martinez is Hispanic, which is the not listed in said phone book as the factor under which all of its unsupportable madness is activated in any given case but, well, you know.
If he was targeted exclusively based on race, of course that’s bs. But we have no information to indicate that. IDK what exactly his duties were as “animal welfare supervisor” but he was part of a system that kills healthy/treatable pets. I do wonder how anyone could do a good job breeding dogs (assuming he was) and work in a pet killing system. The notion that a breeder would stay up all night with a bitch in labor, washing towels at 3am, weighing newborns, etc and then go to a day job where killing puppies is routine seems impossible to reconcile.
Maybe it made him more compassionate. It has been known to happen.
How does that supervisor lady wearing the clean clothes and the high dudgeon reconcile what SHE does?
Albuquerque animal control was a shithole before HART*, and the “ground-breaking” “humane” legislation has done nothing to reduce the slaughter or the hypocrisy. It’s PeTA’s wet dream of an animal control law, and it is working exactly as intended.
——–
* I found a stray heeler puppy in Albuquerque, in our friend’s residential neighborhood, in 2003. Took him to the “shelter.” The publicly-funded, “open-admission” shelter. They refused to take the pup. Told me to go let him loose where I found him.
I agree with Houlahan. No where in the report does it say exactly how he was “breeding pitbulls on the city’s dime”. Did he keep the dogs at the shelter or what? And “breeding pitbulls” does NOT equal “fighting pitbulls”.
On the surface, it appears to me that the only thing he did wrong was use the city email address as a contact point. This is a fireable offense? If I had the money, I would offer to fund his lawsuit against the city for wrongful termination.
No one has made any assertion that I’m aware of that he was involved with dogfighting. My interpretation of the article was that he was fired not just for giving out his city e-mail address as a contact for people interested in his breeding business, but that he was conducting private business on public time. In other words, while on the city clock, he was not protecting community pets from harm, but rather registering his litters with the AKC and advertising puppies for sale online.
If all the city employees who rob the taxpayers by selling Shaklee or cruising Facebook while on the clock are investigated for a month and then fired without warning, then fine. Really, fine.
His boss’s outrage was over the fact that he was breeding pit bulls, and that this was a sign of moral turpitude.
It would be my hope that the city is applying the same treatment to everyone who is supposed to be caring for the community’s pets – that is, if they are found to be doing something other than that on the clock, appropriate measures should be taken to eliminate that practice. I don’t know if this guy received a warning or a reprimand or just woke up one day and got fired. I have no knowledge if he was targeted due to race and/or breed of dog and if it comes to light that he was, I would join the “not fair” chorus. But with the limited information at hand, I’m glad to see that a city govt is keeping an AC employee honest by requiring them to do their job while on the clock. We seem to see very little of this type of accountability where AC is concerned and too often, it spirals into a state of horror for the community’s pets.
Shirley, FYI:
The next board meeting open to the public will be Wednesday, March 14 at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library located at 3030 Poplar Avenue, 38111 in meeting room A from 6:00 PM until 7:30 PM.
That’s tonight.
Everyone get your index cards ready!
“In the situation of feral cats, workers euthanize them by holding them down with a foot on the back, sometimes breaking their bones, reported Dore. Fixing the issue would require more money for more staff and a new building, competing for money in the budget, he said.”
I’m sorry, but this is the incorrect use of the word “euthanize”. The proper phrase is “torture to death”. And no, it would not take “more money and more staff” to fix this. It would take leadership and someone with a human soul – both free and apparently both missing from this “shelter”. How can cruelty charges not be pending against the workers who did this?
That’s what struck me. Maybe Dekalb Co follows the Memphis model of defending animal abusers on the public payroll.
agree with Houlahan the man was railroaded.. HART is horrible! the rest.. yup
I can imagine this going on all across animal controls all across America! What a terrible thought.
It helps to read the report from the task force. There’s a link to it (PDF format) in the news article. The report details a number of abuses at the shelter and calls for zero tolerance of inhumane treatment. It’s a well-researched, well-written, concise blueprint for converting the shelter to no-kill. I believe the task force will get what they want–the sooner the better.
According to the task force, the method of restraining feral cats is used in other GA shelters as well. I didn’t know this and doubt many other people did, either. I don’t believe this kind of cruelty is going to be tolerated by the citizens of DeKalb Co. or GA generally.
Thanks for the heads up Jeanne. At the time of the post, the report was NOT there and in fact, the reporter mentioned that he had filed a FOIA for it but had not received it. He also mentioned that his article was based on task force members discussing what was in the report. Now that the actual report has been added, I look forward to reading it.