Threat to National Security!
Posted on 08/02/2013 6:08:24 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
The president of a Wisconsin animal shelter is furious after the state Department of Natural Resources raided the facility with armed agents, detained volunteer workers and killed a baby deer named “Giggles.”
I’m furious,” said Cindy Schultz, president of the Society of St. Francis in Kenosha, Wis. “We are a no-kill shelter. And they killed her. They killed Giggles. I’m furious – furious.”
Schultz told Fox News an Illinois family found a baby fawn that had been abandoned by her mother. The family brought the deer to the Wisconsin shelter.
Staff members nicknamed the deer “Giggles.”
Wisconsin law bans residents or shelters from possessing any live wild animals without a license. Wisconsin does not rehabilitate deer so if they find an abandoned fawn, the creature is left to die, Schultz said.
“We took it of course and we made arrangements to transfer the deer to an animal reserve in Illinois,” she said. “The day before she was supposed to leave, we had the raid.”
On July 15 DNR agents and four deputy sheriff’s staged the surprise raid in what staff workers called a massive and “intimidating” show of force.
(Excerpt) Read more at radio.foxnews.com ...
Answer: A DHS or BATF agent. The absolute lowest of lowlifes in the federal government’s armed wing of paramilitary psychopaths.
That was a really stupid response. I hunt deer because I enjoy knowing that I eat whatever I shoot.
Killing a fawn like this was both evil and senseless, and on par with the same kind of psychopath tnat shoots up a school.
Killing an animal because you need to eat is one thing, but killing an animal for no reason at all is wrong.
Thank you for that explanation. IMO when all the facts are in concerning this case, DNR hamhandedness & excessive use of force still remain the dominant issue.
It’s yet another example of armed governmental overreach & citizens have a right to express their concerns thereto.
If you think using drones and 9 armed agents to take out a baby deer is the way to conduct law enforcement....just give up any pretence of the home of the free and the land of the brave.
WOW! Obviously you haven’t read all the post regarding what I said. Before jumping into the pool, you might test the water.
So, what is your solution ... dump the fawn into the wild and let it starve to death?
Yes I’ve yet to hear any response by the defenders of these bad asses. The Gangster Disciples are going to kill more people tonight than any deer disease you can imagine. If they want to prove themselves ask for an interagency task force and drive now...maybe an hour and a half to the South side of Chicago. Man up.Try their bully tactics there. See what happens.
There aren’t any Zoo’s in Wisconsin?
“What kind of man, with a secure and self satisfying job with the gummint, suits up at 0600 to hop into a black SUV and arrive at an animal shelter, plays super cop with some scared civilians and, discovering Bambi decides or is ordered to shoot him ... and does ... ?
What kind of man is that?”
You are painting an apocalyptic picture of a massive epizootic outbreak. You may be right about all that, but still I don't understand why a police operation had to be carried out against one fawn while thousands of other deer are massing in the forests?
don’t let that stop you from advocating moving deer from contaminated areas to clean ones
I have mentioned that it is illegal, for a good reason. The shelter shouldn't have tried to break the law. If the illness has a very long incubation period then there is no way to be sure. The simplest solution would be to take the fawn and release it in a nearby forest. If he makes it, good for him. If not, such things happen too.
I want to stress that this is not about a deer. It's all about humans. Humans that had good intentions; perhaps they were wrong. That does not explain why volunteer workers had to be "raided with armed agents, detained." What is the chance that they, or the deer, shoot back? What is the chance that one of those workers runs away? (If he does, so what?) A mighty force of one cop and one vet would be more than sufficient. If that's not enough, the cop has radio. The massive police response to a minor incident is the problem here, not the deer. Most of the article is about humans that were hurt by the police. The conflict has moved past the fawn long ago - it's now between the workers and the LEOs.
Keep reading, see post #100.
That being said, I fully agree that this dreadful necessity was poorly handled.
Do you seriously think it would be more merciful to allow the fawn to starve to death?
They were going to move this deer to a shelter less then a mile away in IL. This spreads disease how?
Then we agree on most of the problem. With regard to the disease and such: Blackirish asks:
They were going to move this deer to a shelter less then a mile away in IL. This spreads disease how?
In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is an informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom.
In this case, the deer could traverse the whole country by being moved just a mile between adjacent shelters. I do not want to play a veterinarian here, so I do not know much about complications of moving sick animals - and as I said, the law already forbids such transportation without an explicit approval. There is no obvious gain from such transportation, but there is a chance of loss. It is wise to not transport. It is humans' responsibility to do what is best for the population, even if some specific individuals have to die. We are not Pak Protectors.
Do you seriously think it would be more merciful to allow the fawn to starve to death?
It's a serious philosophical question. It's not guaranteed that the fawn will die, but it's highly probable, especially if it still depends on milk. On the other hand, there is no reason to kill the fawn - it's not likely to run farther than an adult deer. What is gained by killing the deer? What is lost by releasing it?
(There are obvious philosophical similarities with human children, where expecting mothers are told by learned doctors that the child won't be healthy, and it's better to kill him here and now, before the child is born. The living beings are different, but the moral problem is of the same nature - taking direct responsibility for death of a young and defenseless living being.)
You can also look at it from another angle. What if no human ever saw the fawn? Then there would be no interference. If the workers of the shelter "acted stupidly" and brought a wild creature in, they have a perfectly good way to repair the damage: take the fawn and put it back exactly where it was found. Leave him there to his fate. It would be fair. I don't think the fawn would be any better from that, but the humans would be better off because they did all they could. That is important. All human conflicts begin in human mind. It is very wise to be nice to others, be it humans or animals. Everyone probably knows that now, after the GZ trial; but all the religious literature (with one exception) tirelessly repeats this very idea.
I think your argument falls apart with the slippery slope argument because that leads to absurdities like this or worse an excuse for government to use military force just because it can. Mark Styens theory of a governmental so big it becomes a “blind leviathan” unaccountable bureaucrats serving the bureaucracy not us. It leads to a child eating a pop tart and being deemed a threat because it looks like a gun. Or using a task force and drones to kill a baby deer.
I’m in upstate NY and people have rehabbed deer in their back yard. Legal or not, no one raids the home and kills the deer. And even if you wanted to kill it, wait until it’s an adult and has more meat to offer.
And I’ve never had a speeding ticket! :)
“Giggles” - Enemy of the State!
Threat to National Security!
Mother?
The situation does fall apart, but not because of the argument. We need to review everything step by step to understand what went wrong.
First, is the law correct in prohibiting uncontrolled transportation of wildlife? I say it is; nobody outside of scientists, zookeepers and game wardens has a need so strong that human laws need to be modified to allow for that behavior. If someone does have a need, the transportation should be made safe enough. Humans already made too many mistakes with introduction of species into new habitats. So let's mark the law as fair.
Next, is it fair to say that transportation for a mile is illegal? (If not a mile, what about ten yards, or ten miles?) If you think about the purpose of the law, you can initially see that the law shouldn't be concerned with transportation under a distance that the animal can walk on his own. But there is a catch - there are natural boundaries that an animal cannot cross, but a vehicle can. They don't have to be of the size of Grand Canyon. A wide, active freeway may be enough, or inhospitable landscape, or areas without water or food, or areas with danger. Should the law go into such details? I think it shouldn't. There is no gain to humans from all those highly detailed definitions. It's simpler to forbid all transportation, to any distance, of any wildlife species. If you absolutely, positively must transport, get an approval from the local people who are in charge. They probably know their job.
In the end, the law is a wide brush that roughly marks the permitted activities. If the law prohibits something, but you think that the law doesn't exactly apply, or that a specific situation requires a special solution, what do you do as an ideal human? The answer is simple: you go to the judge and explain what's happening. If the judge says that the law stands, but it has a special path that you may take, you take that path. It may be a difficult path, and it may be not worth your effort to go there, but it will be your decision.
None of that is an absurdity. In fact, that's how a civilized society is supposed to behave. The people write laws that define what the community deems desirable and undesirable. Those are generic laws, and they cannot cover everything. Then we have judges who interpret those laws and determine how they apply to given circumstances. And then each law, if it is seen as applicable, defines what a human should do in that situation.
The absurdity began when the local wildlife resource management people determined, in their interpretation, that laws have been broken. They used very strange methods to come up with those conclusions, such as covert observation. I can count is as Absurdity #1, but in itself is not illegal. What they determined should be only an input to the judge. In an ideal society once the official determines that a violation is occurring, the first thing he should do is to stop that violation from occurring further. ("Arrest" = "Stop.") In this case, when a violation is technical, the most reasonable thing to do would be to talk to the manager and tell him that a certain thing is illegal, and if they don't stop doing it they will be fined or otherwise punished, as the law permits.
The absurdity #2 is that the officials never talked to the shelter workers. It would be reasonable if they wanted to arrest them for a crime that had been committed. But there is no criminal responsibility for violation of that part of the Fish & Game Code (that I know of.) Talking to people is the primary method of resolving conflicts. It was not used. The problem with this omission is that they couldn't know exactly what fawn this is, and how it came to be, and what is his history. For all they know, it could be a pet, not a wild animal. If they knew something from their observations, it still could be wrong.
The next absurdity, #3, is the raid and detention of workers. What was the purpose of the raid? To capture the evidence of the crime? There was no need for a raid; one could just walk in and see the fawn. Why the workers were detained, on what grounds? I suspect only because the LEO could do that, and wanted to "secure the scene" regardless of rights of everyone who happened to be on that scene. Is that legal? I suspect that is debatable in court; but certainly this is not right. Police had no beef with any particular worker because nobody in particular was responsible for holding the fawn. If anyone, it would be the manager of the shelter. You do not need to detain anyone to talk to the manager. Militarized policing strikes again.
The next absurdity, #4 now, was in execution of the deer. That is quite serious, IMO, because it was an irreversible action taken without judicial approval - unless the judge signed a warrant for the raid that explicitly mentioned termination of this particular animal. Even then there are problems. As I mentioned in #2, how would they know that this deer is exactly that deer? Was any identification done? What if there were two fawns at the shelter? What if there were none? A society of laws would expect the police to seize the disputed property, not to destroy it on first sight. That would be legal for game wardens inside a forest; but this happened on private property, to a privately held animal. It could be someone's pet, or property of a scientific institution. If the police captures the disputed item, the actions of the police can be debated in court. That's what the police should have done here. They haven't done so; in result, they committed a violation of property rights. If the police suspect that your car is stolen, they are not permitted to blow it up. Not yet, at least.
Within the absuurdity #4 hides yet another, #5. The LEO executed the deer in sight of the workers. This subjected those people - who, as one might imagine, love animals - to a gruesome scene. The article clealy spells this issue out - the workers were shocked and hurt by this act. The police now unreasonably subjected innocent people to mental pain and suffering. Most of them did not deserve it, even if one generously assumes that the manager, who allowed the fawn in, deserved this treatment by his decision. (That is not true; crime is one thing, punishment is another - and only the judge can compare them.)
Within the #5 is #6. Shooting an animal that is suspected of being infected contaminates the area. This is unsafe for everyone involved - humans and animals alike. The police here are guilty (!) of intentional contamination. Disinfection of the area would have to be done at expense of the shelter. That would be unnecessary if the animal is put to sleep. The chemicals for that would be at the shelter already.
To summarize: the law is not unreasonable, and the shelter workers should have been aware of it. What "they" (some of them) did was against the letter of the law. However everything that the police did was wrong on many layers; the police was singlehandedly responsible for escalating the situation from a mere local phone call to a nation-wide horror story. The government did use the military grade force here, and equally militant methods of Judge Dredd. However their actions were triggered only by a minor violation of the law that was not even yet complete. Their actions were carried out not to protect one law, but to destroy other laws, like "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". If that continues, the SS troops will start burning churches with people inside just because SS are not willing to negotiate with people who are in their right to live as they wish. Or, perhaps, that already happened.
Then the way it should have gone was “Ma’am, I’m very sorry I have to do this but these are the relevant quarantine laws, and they exist because...”.
Manners and gentleness cost nothing. There was zero need for a show of force. It sucks for the deer that it had to be put down, but the SWAT raid, not the euthanization, is the issue.
Anyone who truly loves animals understands sometimes it’s a sad necessity that you have to euthanize a sick animal to prevent the deaths of many healthy ones.
Perfect.
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