A beastly kind of cruelty Source >
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cruelty17aug17,0,564550.story?coll=la-home-center
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Drive-by shooters, often youths, are killing farm animals in a growing wave
of violence. The culprits may face only vandalism charges.
By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 17, 2007
PETALUMA, CALIF. -- The buzzards led Nick Bursio to his prized calf. He found
the body just over a rise in the field, with a bullet hole in its left
shoulder, near the heart.
Bursio had heard of animals killed by rustlers for their meat. But not until
that May morning had he ever imagined anything so senseless as shooting cattle
presumably just to watch them die.
"I had a hollow feeling in my gut, to see that dead calf laying there, with the
mother cow bellowing nearby," said the Sonoma County rancher. "I thought, what
the hell's going on in this place?"
Authorities are searching for a drive-by shooter who guns down cows as they
calmly munch grass in the rolling pastureland 50 miles north of San Francisco.
Since February, five cows have been found dead in two counties, shot with
small-caliber bullets designed to inflict prolonged pain and suffering.
Nationwide, an increasing number of animal cruelty cases are being reported
outside city limits: Horses, cows, goats and other farm animals are being
killed, authorities say, often by angry, reckless youths, perhaps acting on
dares.
Although there are no statistics on such crimes, newspapers detail scores of
cases. Two Texas college students were indicted last fall for slashing a
horse's neck before stabbing it in the heart with a broken golf club handle. In
Pennsylvania in 2005, three joy-riding men killed a pony named Ted E. Bear that
belonged to a 4-year-old boy.
Last year, two Tennessee teens shot and killed 24 cows, many of them pregnant.
"They just wanted to see what shooting cattle was like," said Hickman County
Sheriff Randal Ward.
California has also seen its share of the rural violence. In addition to the
Northern California cattle shootings, Oakland police are investigating the May
killing of 15 goats, each shot in the face as they huddled in a portable pen.
Officers said residents had called in to report the sound of "babies crying."
Fresno County detectives arrested two groups of teens in 2005 in the shooting
of two dozen cows and horses. In 2003, two Sonoma County men used their cars to
ram to death a horse named Gentle Song.
Still, the killing of large farm animals garners little attention in the United
States, where the loudest outcry is reserved for the killing of suburban pets
or other domesticated animals. Recently, pro football quarterback Michael Vick
made front-page news, charged in connection with operating a dog-fighting farm.
Although 43 states have passed felony animal cruelty laws, they rarely apply to
livestock -- thanks in part to a strong cattleman's lobby -- as long as
ranchers follow "accepted husbandry practices."
In California, state law provides some protection for large farm animals, but
enforcement varies among counties. As a result, prosecutors in farm cases often
settle for convictions on lesser vandalism charges.
"Animals raised commercially for food have little legal protection against
cruelty," said Gene Baur, president of Farm Sanctuary, a group that campaigns
against cruelty to farm animals. "It speaks to a prejudice against certain
animals, not based on a rational assessment of their ability to feel pain but
on our intended use for them."
Studies suggest that youths who engage in animal cruelty often commit violent
criminal behavior as adults. Among those who preyed on animals before turning
on people were mass killers Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Albert DeSalvo, the
Boston Strangler.
The random killing of larger animals signals a troubling psychology that
experts are only beginning to understand. Even when caught, most youths refuse
to talk about their crimes.
"When you do get to talk to kids and ask why they did it, the most common
response is that they were bored," said Randall Lockwood, vice president for
anti-cruelty initiatives at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals. "They're obviously troubled. Most bored teens shoot hoops or go see
movies; they don't go out shooting horses and cows.
"But you're not going to hear them say, 'I'm alienated against society and this
is how I'm reaching out,' " he said.
Still, researchers are developing a personality profile of those who kill large
animals outside the context of legal hunting. Abusers who target livestock act
out of a different motivation than those who pick on smaller creatures, said
Mary Lou Randour, national director of human-animal relations for the Humane
Society. "Driving around in search of animals to kill is very planned and
methodical, which could make it more pathological and dangerous. These animals
could be standbys for the real thing: a human being."
In January, a 16-year-old Humboldt County boy was sentenced to 15 years in
prison for the killing of a homeless man. Earlier, that same night, the teen
fired a dozen shots into a cow, hitting it in the face and eye and cutting off
an ear, authorities said.
Such violence preoccupies Cindy Machado, a Marin County Humane Society
detective. Combing country roads in her blue animal control truck, she is
pursuing four cases involving the killing of cattle in the San Francisco area.
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