In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide. In the world of law enforcement \u2014 and in the larger world that our laws were designed to shape \u2014 animal-cruelty issues were long considered a peripheral concern and the province of local A.S.P.C.A. and Humane Society organizations; offenses as removed and distinct from the work of enforcing the human penal code as we humans have deemed ourselves to be from animals. But that illusory distinction is rapidly fading.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith traditional law enforcement,\u201d Sgt. David Hunt, a dog-fighting expert with the Franklin County Sheriff\u2019s Office in Columbus, Ohio, told me, \u201cthe attitude has been that we have enough stuff on our plate, let the others worry about Fluffy and Muffy. But I\u2019m starting to see a shift in that mentality now.\u201d Hunt has traveled to 24 states around the country in order to teach law-enforcement personnel about the dog-fighting underworld, often stressing the link between activities like\u00a0dog fighting<\/a> and domestic violence. \u201cYou have to sell it to them in such a way that it\u2019s not a Fluffy-Muffy issue,\u201d he said of teaching police officers about animal-abuse issues. \u201cIt\u2019s part of a larger nexus of crimes and the psyche behind them.\u201d Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,14,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-industry","category-watching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3461,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3459\/revisions\/3461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebarrelracing.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}