Remember in June when Merced Co Animal Control raided the place where they had been sending thousands of kittens – Last Hope Cat Kingdom – including the day of the raid? An astounding 200 kittens were killed on site. After the violence was over, Kristi Caseri, Merced Co AC supervisor, commented on Facebook in response to a post about the raid:
“We are the champions my friends! And well (sic) keep on fighting till we win! Some day the idiots will all be dealt with.”
The comment was later deleted but not before Last Hope Cat Kingdom owner Renate Schmitz saw it:
“I was shocked that they celebrate something like this and say they are the champions,” Schmitz said. “It came to my attention and I showed it right away to [pound manager Rick] Blackwell and I said, ‘This is what you people do here.’”
Blackwell said no disciplinary action was taken against Caseri because the post was on a private Facebook page and did not divulge information about the case.
No charges have been brought against Renate Schmitz or anyone at Last Hope Cat Kingdom. A public hearing regarding the sanctuary’s permit will be held in approximately 2 months.
And at the Merced police department, where they were taking injured pets to the shooting range to be shot to death by police officers, the supposed new policy for handling injured pets is a giant question mark.
Since then, the department and city have not released any information regarding the new policy, details about how it will work or what steps they are taking in the process.
[…]
Calls placed to Police Chief Norm Andrade, Merced City Manager John Bramble and Lt. Bimley West were not returned Friday.
The new policy, which involves hands-on consultation with a veterinarian, doesn’t seem to have been implemented yet. But the department was forced to come up with something due to public outcry after the local paper exposed the practice of driving injured pets to a shooting range to face killing by officers untrained in animal euthanasia:
“What we’ve done already is decide the police won’t do that anymore,” [Merced mayor Stan] Thurston said. “The thing is, the police officers do not want to put a bleeding injured dog in the back of their car.”
I take it he means they don’t want to put a bleeding injured dog in their car in order to drive the animal to a vet. Because we know they’ve been putting bleeding injured dogs in their cars for the last 25 years when it meant they got to blast them with a shotgun at the firing range. Oh but nobody WANTS to kill animals so what am I saying?
(Thank you Clarice for the links.)