Topic: Prison for Kicking a Cat? - page 2. (Read 2459 times)

What is this man doing kicking a cat?  That is animal abuse!!!!!  I would severely beat any person who kicked my cat.  He deserves any punishment he gets!!!!!!

No one brought up race but you.

Overkill or deserved? I for one cannot see how/who it helps to imprison anyone for animal cruelty. Couldn't the people who abuse animals learn a better lesson if sentenced to working for animals? Wouldn't the activists gain more if these people are put into service of animals?

A common thread that links most serial killers is deliberate animal abuse. When someone lures an animal in order to do that animal harm, he is an obvious danger to society. BTW, this is not about race . White guys do it too.

But even if he did kick someone, the penalty is not a prison term. There is a reason why this country has the most people in the penal system, and the reason is that they do not think that there are alternatives to imprisonment, when to me it is obvious that there are.

People who abuse animals are one step away from doing the same to people. This sick individual took great joy in inflicting serious injury to this cat,  and even went out of his way to lure the cat in to do it. Do I object to jail time for him? Absolutely not - but I do agree that part of his sentence should be public service at an animal shelter - under the closest of supervision, of course.

People who consume meat products is not that much different than torturing animals. Don't see anyone crying over it.

Had it been a person he kicked, Mr. Robinson, 22, most likely would have received a quick plea bargain requiring no jail time — if, that is, he had even been arrested. And had he kicked that gray cat a few years ago, a similar outcome might have awaited him.

But now, every time Mr. Robinson has appeared in court in Brooklyn, animal-rights activists have surrounded him, attending his hearings and calling for a jail sentence. He has not even received a plea offer from prosecutors — extremely rare in misdemeanor cases.

Mr. Robinson, with one seemingly unconsidered kick, has unwittingly placed himself at the center of an impassioned, growing debate.

On one side are the activists. Once dismissed as cat ladies or fringe do-gooders, they have come to wield real power through funding, organization and a focus on legal remedies for animal abuse. They have embraced social-media campaigns; offered rewards to potential witnesses to animal abuse; trained prosecutors; and made inroads in pushing law enforcement across the country to arrest, and seek jail time for, animal abusers.

Yet lawyers defending the accused say that punishment in such cases can seem disproportionate to the crime when an animal is the victim.

At the moment, the activists seem to be winning the fight. The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced this month that it would track animal abuse as a separate crime, rather than lumping it in the “other” category.

In New York City, the Police Department took over responsibility for animal abuse complaints in January, and created an Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad. Arrests for animal abuse increased about 250 percent through September, compared with the same period last year.

And the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, said the Robinson case, which is to go to trial on Wednesday, was “indicative of my determination to be strong on folks who think they can just abuse any type of animal.”