Phil Reisman: Fighting animal cruelty county by county
Animal cruelty takes many bizarre forms. Let us sadly count the cruel ways.
One allegation of depravity and indifference just arrived from the Hudson Valley Humane Society's law enforcement arm.
According to the HVHS, a 50-year-old Pomona man by the name of Charles Bovis traps coyotes, which he skins for their pelts. Evidently, he has a license to do this.
Now, it's true that Eastern coyotes have become something of a suburban menace in recent years, so one less varmint in the world might not be cause for overwhelming grief.
But the aforementioned Pomona trapper, the HVHS alleges, "brutally tortured" a coyote he caught in a leg trap in a wooded copse off Call Hollow Road.
After snaring the coyote, Bovis took a shovel and beat it over the head "multiple times," the HVHS charged. Failing to kill it, he then strung up the injured animal by its hind legs and left it hanging on a tree for five hours, the HVHS says.
Haverstraw police discovered the coyote and put it out of its misery. Bovis was later arrested and charged with violating Section 353 of Article 26 of the Agriculture & Markets Law, a Class A misdemeanor.
Animal rights activists are more active than ever — a fact that Bovis is facing firsthand. They have raised public consciousness and pushed for stricter laws and harsher penalties against sadistic miscreants who harm animals, wild or domestic. Buster's Law, which was enacted in 1999 and named after a cat in Schenectady that was doused with kerosene and set on fire, raised animal cruelty to a felony offense in New York.
Nevertheless, the animal cruelty file in this region is bulging. One case that captured national attention was last April's grim discovery of 25 dead cats that had been stuffed in plastic bags and hung from trees in Yonkers. It amounted to a "whodunit," a disturbing mystery that persisted for seven months and stirred the emotions of animal lovers — among them Geezer Butler, the bassist for the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, who offered a $25,000 reward.
Finally, in November, investigators from Westchester's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals arrested Rene Carcamo, a 60-year-old Yonkers man who was charged with illegally disposing the dead cats. He was additionally charged with a couple of counts of animal cruelty for failing to give medical attention to two live kittens in his possession.
Carcamo's legal fate remains up in the air, but the details of his case, which are still fresh in the public's mind, prompted a Putnam County legislator to take action.
Last week, Bill Gouldman, a Republican, proposed a local law to establish a county animal abuse registry. The idea is to put the names and addresses of convicted offenders on an online list, creating a useful tool with which to vet anyone seeking to buy or adopt a pet.
Gouldman has already consulted with Ken Ross, the chief of Putnam's SPCA, which makes most of the animal cruelty arrests and would be the lead agency in creating and maintaining the registry.
Five other counties in New York have registries — Westchester, Rockland, Suffolk, Nassau and Albany. Ross told me that the Putnam law would be similar to the others, but not a verbatim copy.
"Hopefully, this is something that will go through because it's one of those crimes that opens up to other crimes," Ross said. "There's an association with domestic violence and child abuse."
Raising a red flag to domestic violence was a key rationale behind the Westchester law that is three pages long and was enacted in 2012 at the urging of the Westchester Bar Association. The bar cited a study showing that 71 percent of women who sought refuge at shelters had reported that their abuser had also harmed or threatened their pets.
One infamous case was that of 21-year-old Andrew King of Yorktown who in 2010 killed his ex-girlfriend's dog, a Yorkshire terrier-mix, and stuffed it behind a clothes dryer. King was convicted under the provisions of Buster's Law and sentenced to one year in prison.
If King had committed the crime after the law was passed, he certainly would've been a candidate for the Westchester registry, which is the responsibility of the county Department of Public Safety. As it stands now, the Westchester registry has not been activated. However, Rene Carcamo could receive the dubious distinction of being first on the list.
In Rockland County, three men are on the abuse list, which can be found by going to the county sheriff's website. All of them were convicted of crimes connected to dog fighting.
Depending on how his case turns out, Bovis, the Pomona coyote trapper, may soon join them.
Twitter: @philreisman