APD will start paying closer attention to animal cruelty

The new effort, announced Tuesday, is part of a plan to partner with the Anchorage Animal Care and Control Center to investigate and prosecute animal cruelty cases, which can be a harbinger of abuse to come, police say.

"Research is showing more and more that there's a direct link between domestic violence and anger vented against animals," police Lt. Dave Parker said. "Recognizing that, and that it's supported by good, sound research, it makes sense for us to look at that as another avenue to help people as well as creatures."

According to the Humane Society of the United States, abusive family members sometimes threaten, injure or kill pets in their efforts to be controlling. The society backs up that assertion in part with a 1997 survey of 50 of the largest shelters for battered women in the United States, which reported that 85 percent of women and 63 percent of children entering shelters had witnessed pet abuse in the family.

At a conference discussing the link between cruelty to animals and domestic violence this fall, police, prosecutors and animal control officials saw that there was a need to coordinate their efforts, said Brooke Taylor, spokeswoman for animal control.

"In the past, cruelty cases weren't always a priority for APD and other parties involved," she said. "It got the dialogue going to say that not only do we need to prosecute these animal cruelty cases and really hold people responsible ... but that there's a larger issue here, that if we prosecute these cases it can bring to light other serious family problems."

Animal control will now be able to work with a single police contact, detective Jackie Conn, said.

Conn, who currently works theft cases, is being specially trained in animal cases and will provide expertise that the officers on the streets, who previously handled such cases, can draw from, Parker said.

All officers are also being asked to take a deeper look around when responding to cases of animal cruelty -- misdemeanors under city law -- to see if there are human victims as well, he said.

"Where there is an anger control issue, there's an anger control issue," Parker said. "If a person's anger is vented against a pet for whatever reason, often we find that that same kind of anger, that outburst, will be vented towards another person."

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.