In other news: Another NFL dog abuser is going to prison. Lawsuit: Do dogs have a legal right to be free from cruelty? Hello! And welcome to a new cat (species). The first country free from dog-bite related human rabies. Why vegan restaurants are closing. A ban on whaling?
These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:
Another NFL dog abuser is going to prison
In a case reminiscent of Michael Vick,
A former NFL running back was sentenced to five years in federal prison Thursday for operating a large-scale dogfighting ring in Oklahoma that “resulted in death and serious bodily injury” to hundreds of pit bulls, according to a Department of Justice release.
The Justice Department also noted that “His trafficking of fighting dogs [sic] to other dog fighters across the country contributed to the growth of the dog fighting industry.” Following the verdict, LeShon Johnson was forced to surrender 190 dogs from his “Mal Kant Kennels,” the largest number ever seized from a single person in a federal dogfighting case, officials said.
Johnson previously “pleaded guilty to state animal fighting charges in 2004.” He received no jail time and restarted a dog fighting operation. Despite the convictions, Johnson’s attorney called him “a good person who loves his dogs.” His attorney asked for no jail time yet again. Prosecutors had asked for 10 years.
It is my hope that when he gets out of prison, he won’t be rewarded the way Vick was. Despite drowning, shooting, hanging, electrocuting, and beating dogs to death, Vick was embraced by the Humane Society of the United States, allowed back into the NFL, given an endorsement deal by Nike and a job at Fox Sports, and is now a coach for the Norfolk State Spartans football team. Inexplicably, school administrators considered him a “role model” for students.
In addition, academic writers wrote that Vick should never have been prosecuted. Katja Guenther, a race and gender professor at the University of California at Riverside, wrote that Vick was the true victim and prosecuted because of his skin color. To make that case, she wrote that treating animals as family, showing them affection and providing them medical care are white values; in contrast to treating animals “as resources, whether protective (as in guarding) or financial (as in breeding or possibly fighting)” which she claimed is inherent to black culture. She further argued that rescuers who want dogs to live with “those who will treat their dog as a family member” and will “care for their dog at a high level for the duration of the dog’s life” are using dogs “as instruments for reproducing whiteness.”
Likewise, Professor Harlan Weaver at Kansas State University claimed that the homes the surviving dogs were placed in promoted “a white-supremacist ideal of family formations” and “effectively segregated them from Blackness.”
Johnson, like Vick, is a threat to dogs and to decency regardless of the views of HSUS, Nike, Fox Sports, Norfolk State University, the University of California or Kansas State. Like Vick, he should never be allowed around dogs ever again. Tragically, such a condition is not allowed under federal law.
Lawsuit: Do dogs have a legal right to be free from cruelty?
