Young people who torture and kill animals are prone to violence against people later in life if it goes unchecked, studies have shown. A new federal category for animal cruelty crimes will help root out those pet abusers before their behavior worsens and give a boost to prosecutions, an animal welfare group says.

For years, the FBI has filed animal abuse under the label "other" along with a variety of lesser crimes, making cruelty hard to find, hard to count and hard to track. The bureau announced this month that it would make animal cruelty a Group A felony with its own category — the same way crimes like homicide, arson and assault are listed.

"It will help get better sentences, sway juries and make for better plea bargains," said Madeline Bernstein, president and CEO of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles and a former New York prosecutor.

The category also will help identify young offenders, and a defendant might realize "if he gets help now, he won't turn into Jeffrey Dahmer," she said.

Law enforcement agencies will have to report incidents and arrests in four areas: simple or gross neglect; intentional abuse and torture; organized abuse, including dogfighting and cockfighting; and animal sexual abuse, the FBI said in statement. The bureau didn't answer questions beyond a short statement.

"The immediate benefit is it will be in front of law enforcement every month when they have to do their crime reports," said John Thompson, interim executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association who worked to get the new animal cruelty category instituted. "That's something we have never seen."

Officers will start to see the data are facts and "not just somebody saying the 'Son of Sam' killed animals before he went to human victims and 70-some percent of the school shooters abused animals prior to doing their acts before people," said Thompson, a retired assistant sheriff from Prince George's County, Maryland.

FBI studies show that serial killers like Dahmer impaled the heads of dogs, frogs and cats on sticks; David Berkowitz, known as the "Son of Sam," poisoned his mother's parakeet; and Albert DeSalvo, aka the "Boston Strangler," trapped cats and dogs in wooden crates and killed them by shooting arrows through the boxes.

It will take time and money to update FBI and law enforcement databases nationwide, revise manuals and send out guidelines, Thompson said, so there won't be any data collected until January 2016. After that, it will take several months before there are numbers to analyze.

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See I have no issue with this because usually if some psycho fuck can do this to animals he or she can progress to people pretty easily down the line.

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See I have no issue with this because usually if some psycho fuck can do this to animals he or she can progress to people pretty easily down the line.

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Lol





You mean I can't torture my dolphin?

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I didn't realize the FBI had legal authority to determine what is and isn't a felony.  Also, this WILL be abused.  If you live in a rural area and have a dog that needs to be put down, a lot of folks put their own dogs down.  Now they'll have to go pay several hundred dollars for a vet to do it.  Have a feral cat on your property?  Won't be able to shoot it.  The feral cat population has decimated the native songbird populations in the US.

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The Department of Pre-Crime takes another slouching step towards birth.

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Lol

You mean I can't torture my dolphin?

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See I have no issue with this because usually if some psycho fuck can do this to animals he or she can progress to people pretty easily down the line.

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Who gets to decide what the definition of animal cruelty is? The government. It can mean whatever they want it to mean. And then if there are ever any mandatory minimum sentences, it could make a felon out of any of us.

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There was a case in NC where someone set a GSD on fire and left it to die. Thankfully he survived and is now a therapy dog (for children I think). In cases like these I'd love to see these douches get federal charges.

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Pretty sure you're a sick worthless fuck if you take an axe to a horse



http://i.imgur.com/tlsm1it.jpg]http://]http://i.imgur.com/tlsm1it.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/tlsm1it.jpg

   

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Pretty sure you're a sick worthless fuck if you take an axe to a horse

http://i.imgur.com/tlsm1it.jpg]http://]http://i.imgur.com/tlsm1it.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/tlsm1it.jpg
   

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Lol

You mean I can't torture my dolphin?

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Disagree. This is like restricting guns because someone *might* kill someone later.

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I didn't realize the FBI had legal authority to determine what is and isn't a felony.  Also, this WILL be abused.  If you live in a rural area and have a dog that needs to be put down, a lot of folks put their own dogs down.  Now they'll have to go pay several hundred dollars for a vet to do it.  Have a feral cat on your property?  Won't be able to shoot it.  The feral cat population has decimated the native songbird populations in the US.

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I have zero problems with the FBI tracking crime stats or reclassifying animal cruelty with respect to how it is tracked for statistical purposes.


And no, the FBI didn't turn animal cruelty into a top-tier felony.  They simply moved animal cruelty out of the miscellaneous crime category and into it's own category for statical record keeping purposes like they do with other criminal record keeping.  e.g., property crime and motor vehicle theft.

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Disagree. This is like restricting guns because someone *might* kill someone later.

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What if I hurt my dogs feelings?