Abusing the system

LITTLE ROCK — Not all issues at the state Capitol are black-and-white.

Often they’re urban versus rural. That seems to be a factor in legislation that seeks to alter the felony animal-cruelty law that the state enacted at long last in 2009.

Until then it was a more heinous crime in Arkansas to steal a man’s lawnmower than to steal his son’s puppy and torture and slaughter it.

Animal-protection groups treasure the new felony. They desperately oppose weakening it.

Thus we have an emotional issue. -

Senate Bill 13 is sponsored by dairy-farming freshman Republican state Sen. Gary Stubblefield of Branch in Franklin County. That is in due-west Arkansas. It’s a rural region with a low-rolling countryside suitable for grazing.

The bill proposes that only law enforcement personnel-not animal-rights groups or individuals, as is now allowed-could investigate complaints of animal abuse.

It says law enforcement personnel would need the consent of two veterinarians, one chosen by the animal owner suspected of abuse, to establish probable cause to seize animals to protect them from suspected abuse.

Animal-rights activists are outraged. They say abusers could be protected by friendly or busy local sheriffs and by conflicted veterinarians.

Most of these activists with whom I’ve talked happen to live either in Little Rock or Fayetteville, progressive communities where human-animal interactions have to do mainly with dogs and cats as house pets, not with horses and cows as livelihood.

So there’s your divide. It’s a deep one, bitter enough, I suspect, that both sides are offended that I would stereotype them and their sensibilities by population density.

The first sponsor of SB13 was Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson. He told me the proposal was brought to himby a Saline County constituent and animal-lover named Barbara Gordon.

Then Hutchinson realized he’d stepped in the middle of a bitter national debate and tossed the bill to Stubblefield, who relished the opportunity to champion it.

Gordon told me she was motivated in part by a story that Stubblefield later also told.

As they related it:

In 2009, animals-rights zealots associated with the Humane Society staked out a Mountain View business owning 25 horses providing trail rides. Finding a couple of horses skinny, the Humane Society lined up the local authorities and raided the place with a veterinarian who recommended seizing all 25 horses.

That was done, and the Humane Society issued a news release.

The skinny horses were not abused, but ill, according to Gordon and Stubblefield. The horses’ well-being actually was jeopardized by relocation and a lack of caregiver familiarity with dietary restrictions, they said.

In time, all the horses were returned and no conviction of any sort, felony or misdemeanor, was achieved.

Desiree Bender, who heads the Humane Society in Arkansas, tells a different, if unfortunate, story.

The horses looked all right except for the fact that a sewage line had broken and the horses were standing in waste, she said. So the horses were relocated temporarily.

Then, to her chagrin, Bender said, an “overzealous prosecutor” filed 25animal-cruelty felonies, all subsequently dropped.

I’m told that Stubblefield gave an impassioned plea for his bill at the Senate Republican caucus the other day, declaring that no one could love animals more than he loves his.

But animal-rights groups read his bill and see horror.

They envision animal mills and abusive practices going uninvestigated by law enforcement officers who have other things to do.

Stan Baker, a veterinarian in Fayetteville who also is a lawyer, says SB13 would apply as follows: If he saw someone beating a dog to death, and if he took a photograph and delivered that photograph to the police, then he would be susceptible to a misdemeanor charge and subject to a fine and losing his veterinary license.

Here’s the wording: A “person who . . . knowingly conducts an investigation, including collection of evidence into alleged claims of criminal conduct involving an animal” is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $5,000.

Stubblefield and Gordon are right that unchecked zealots can present a massive problem and a destructive force-on this and other issues.

But animal-protection groups are right that the bill, as written, potentially impairs more than any abusive practice Stubblefield and Gordon allege. It also imperils the essential vigor of animal-protection law in Arkansas.

We need to reform any occasionally abusive practices far more than we need to weaken the scope of law.

Stubblefield tells me he is having the bill rewritten extensively, though not to change the essence.

That may not be extensively enough. -

John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@ arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @ johnbrummett Twitter feed.