Higher Standards

CFACE receives phone calls and e-mails from concerned citizens across the country, and we are hearing the same stories over and over again. Law Enforcement agencies and Animal Control Officers are ignoring or mishandling animal abuse cases. This is what goes wrong:

1. Officers tend to do what is best for the human and not the animal.
2. Officers tend to educate animal abusers instead of enforcing their local or state cruelty laws
3. While they are educating the animal dies or "goes missing."
4. Animal abusers usually demonstrate a continual ignorance of the law or continually disregard them, while officers standby and do nothing.
5. When officers educate an animal abuser, they don't check back on the welfare of the animal to make sure the animal is out of jeopardy. This is common with starving, chained dogs. Officers tell people to feed and water their dogs, but they don't check back for compliance, meanwhile the animal dies or continues to suffer.
6. Officers don't get the animal or perpetrator into the "system." Tracking of animal and the caretaker are important. Typically CFACE sees little or no paperwork on cruelty cases.
7. Officers tend to believe the animal abuser more than the witness that reported the abuse.
8. There is a little or no accountability in many Animal Control Agencies across the country. Few have standard operating procedures, or require continuing education credits.