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Christopher Meihls is no shrinking violet.
In nearly 20 years as a Fort Wayne police crime scene technician, he has handled more than 500 human death investigations – including shootings, stabbings, beatings and car crashes.
But Meihls said he was horrified when he went through Animal Care and Control’s archive of neglect and abuse cases.
“You wouldn’t believe the cruelty and the injuries,” he said, admitting he is an animal lover. “I don’t know how they do it.”
This spring, Meihls and other Fort Wayne police officers helped provide every Animal Care and Control officer with instruction in the art and science of criminal investigation.
The initial impetus for the training came in 2007 when the legislature created the crime of domestic violence animal cruelty. Because of that law, killing a pet or other animal to intimidate or terrorize a family member or partner became a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison.
“One of the best ways to control people is to control the things they love,” Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards said.
The training armed each officer with a detective’s mind-set and the skills of a crime scene investigator. They learned skills such as how to handle evidence so it will hold up in court and recognizing evidence of a suspect’s probable guilt.
The training has led to one felony arrest – of a man accused of mutilating a dachshund – and the promise of many more investigations like it, Animal Care and Control Director Belinda Lewis said.
No one has been charged locally with violating the new law since the classes ended, although a man pleaded guilty to the crime after he was arrested in March.
Abusers know that hurting or killing their victims’ pets – especially brutally – can cause serious emotional trauma, Richards said.
She has also seen many instances of this among children who are the victims of sexual abuse – offenders buy their silence with assurances that if they tell, their pets will die.
Long before this law took effect, animal care officers had seen these cases. Animal control officer Jeff Schmeling can clearly remember a case about 10 years ago when a woman’s boyfriend stabbed two of her guinea pigs and threw another against a wall – killing all three.
The best Schmeling could do was cite the man for violating a city ordinance – the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket, he said.
“These were her pets,” he said. “And he just killed them.”
The only person prosecuted under the new law this year in Fort Wayne was 23-year-old Camron Cox.
He pleaded guilty to taking his girlfriend’s dog from her arms, throwing it across the room, and stomping on its head and killing it.
In June, a judge sentenced him to six years in prison for domestic violence animal cruelty, criminal confinement and domestic battery.
Aside from the new statute, numerous other animal-related crimes carry possible prison time, including torturing or mutilating an animal and promoting or engaging in dogfighting.
But with the steeply increased penalties for domestic violence animal cruelty comes a vastly increased burden to prove that the suspect committed the crime.
Animal Care and Control officers have to adhere to the same standards in proving a case as any police officer. They must be certain they obtained evidence through lawful searches; that any information from suspects comes after they are read their constitutional rights; and that the crime scene is accurately documented and stays uncontaminated.
So when Lewis developed the training for her officers, she drew on the training she received from experts in veterinary forensics at the University of Florida and other leaders in the field.
But for hands-on experience, Lewis turned to the local experts in human criminal investigation – the Fort Wayne Police Department.
Meihls, also a Fort Wayne police patrolman, said the Animal Care and Control officers were familiar with many of the concepts of criminal investigations from their day-to-day work. But the training reinforced the elements of building a solid case and gave them guidelines, he said.
The four-day, 32-hour hands-on course covered a dozen major points, nearly every aspect of criminal investigation.
Officers were trained on the proper way to handle evidence – making sure the crime scene is taped off and locked down so the public cannot accidentally destroy evidence, and ensuring evidence is labeled and secured so that its validity cannot be contested in court.
This, in particular, is a major new development, said officer Randy Thornton, a four-year veteran of animal control. Before, officers were less thorough when they collected evidence from an animal cruelty case – sometimes throwing it into any empty filing cabinet drawer, he said.
Now, for any evidence, officers bag it and tag it, fill out a form showing the chain of custody, and secure it in a locked evidence locker.
Lewis’ training course spent the most time on diagramming and photographing crime scenes. The goal is to document every relevant piece of evidence in enough detail that the scene can be easily re-created, Lewis said.
Every step of the training was supplemented with hands-on experience. This culminated in a series of mock crime scenes that re-created actual neglect and abuse cases.
The exercise included animals that had previously been euthanized. Their carcasses were shot, stabbed and hung to show the officers what real wounds look like.
The extensive training is all the more reason Animal Care and Control officers consider felony charges against Billy Jack Dennis a major victory.
Dennis, 33, of the 700 block of Third Street, was arrested in July on charges that he mutilated a dachshund by beating it repeatedly with a medieval-style bladed mace after it bit his daughter in the face.
Dennis admitted that he struck the dog, according to the charges filed against him. The case is still pending in Allen Superior Court.
Thornton and his supervisors at Animal Care and Control used the skills they learned to take the criminal investigation from beginning to end, conducting interviews and documenting the scene, Lewis said.
It resulted in the prosecutor’s office filing two counts of cruelty to an animal against Dennis – one felony and one misdemeanor – and was a culmination of the training, Lewis said.
“There is a connection between people who are cruel to animals and people who are violent humans,” she said.
