Kansas,
The following column from the front page of Wednesday's B section offers a great opportunity for supportive animal friendly letters to the editor. Please write. The Kansas City Star takes letters at letters@kcstar.com, asks for less than 150 words, and advises, "Please include name, address and daytime phone number."
February 1, 2006 Wednesday
SECTION: B; Pg. 1
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/13760079.htm
COMMENTARY
Get serious on animal cruelty law
MIKE HENDRICKS
Long before he started killing people, Dennis Rader bound dogs and cats with wire and suffocated them in a barn.
With that happy thought in mind, consider this question:
Will this be the year that Kansas lawmakers finally pass the tough animal cruelty law they should have passed long ago?
They never took the issue seriously when the focus was animals alone.
Not even the horrible death of Scruffy registered.
You remember Scruffy. He was that little Yorkshire terrier that was burned to death on camera nine years ago. The sickos involved ended up being charged with arson because the animal cruelty law was so weak.
This year, though, the nature of the debate has changed.
The BTK case reinforced the fact that animal cruelty is common in the background of serial killers.
Thus, no more do barks and meows greet state Sen. David Haley of Kansas City, Kan., when he argues for addressing the issue once more.
Now the question is not whether the law should be tougher, but how much tougher it should be.
Tomorrow in Topeka a hearing is set to discuss two bills. Both make it a felony under certain circumstances to intentionally kill or seriously injure animals.
Kansas is one of just nine states in the nation where animal cruelty is treated strictly as a misdemeanor, according to the American Humane Association.
Likewise, both bills would mandate psychological testing of the perpetrators. Call it the BTK clause.
Without a doubt, either proposal, if approved, would be a vast improvement over current law.
However, you wouldn’t know that, given some of the rhetoric that’s been floating around.
“Why should a person be allowed to BBQ a dog twice before they are charged with a felony offense?” one animal activist asked in an e-mail recently.
That same e-mail referred to one of the bills up for debate as “a hollow statement of concern that would be better served as lining for the bottom of a hamster cage!”
That’s baloney, but it does give you a sense of the argument and the passions involved.
Haley’s latest bill is the tougher of the two, making even first-offense animal cruelty a felony, punishable by a minimum of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine.
Whereas the bill filed by Republican Sen. Phil Journey of Haysville would make first-offense animal cruelty a misdemeanor, then a felony on subsequent convictions.
Punishment for the misdemeanor would carry a minimum of 15 days in jail. Conviction of the felony would land someone in jail for at least 60 days, but no more than a year.
It’s Journey’s bill that some activists criticize for not being tough enough, as the “hamster cage” reference implies.
Then again, Kansas wouldn’t be the first state to reserve a felony charge for second and subsequent convictions. Missouri also treats first offenses as misdemeanors, as do several other states.
Plus, considering the legislature’s reluctance to press the issue in the past, it might be as good as we’re going to get this year.
Journey’s been joined by 16 other co-sponsors, Democrats and Republicans alike, which is nearly half the Senate.
And as long as the ag lobby can be assured that ranchers won’t be arrested for, say, branding cattle, it might just have a shot at becoming law.
Sure is about time.
(END OF KANSAS CITY STAR PIECE)
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Date: Thu Feb 2 17:17:33 2006
