Regular readers might remember the post on the Salisbury, MA junkyard dog catchers – a father and daughter team allegedly defrauding taxpayers. One owner described to a local news reporter how the female ACO came into her yard and cut the rope to which her dog was tied. The owner says she tried to reclaim the dog and was informed she would need to come up with more than $1000, payable personally to the ACO. When the owner was unable to pay the fees, the dog was “adopted by someone else”.
Salisbury officials recently determined that, in taking the dog, “proper procedure wasn’t followed”. They found the dog, a boxer named Shelby, and reunited her with the rightful owners 6 months after the ACO stole Shelby from her home. Local officials have also deemed the housing of the dogs at the ACOs’ junkyard a “conflict of interest”. The state is involved as well:
The state Department of Agricultural Resources, which oversees local animal control officers, also started an investigation. A department spokesman said Thursday the investigation is still ongoing.
(Thanks Clarice for the link.)
This is the kind of owner abuse that happens when a few opportunists posing as animal welfarists are *enabled* by a “politically correct” environment (created by the animal owner hating animal rights propaganda) that gives ACOs too much power and allows theft under color of law from law-abiding animal owners.
I am happy for Shelby and her family but have to wonder how many other pets might have been wrongfully seized by these junkyard owners who DIDN’T get featured on the local news?
Thank you for the update. It’s’ sad – but thugs and creeps like this abound when it comes to money and animals.
These two are simply opportunists out to grab some power and make a buck. The animals are a means to an end, nothing more.
I am tickled pink to read this update.. Best news I’ve read so far today.. Thanks for the update
Let’s hope more owners come forward. It’s thanks to blogs like this that such matters see the light of day. Hopefully these two crooks will get what is coming to them.
I’m shocked, shocked to find out that there may have been something improper going on. It all looked so legitimate when I first read the story. It honestly looked like a scheme that the bad guys on Scooby Doo would come up with.
But they weren’t even clever enough to wear masks.