The Bloodthirsty and Lawless Harrisonburg Police Follow Up Their Bludgeoning to Death of an Injured Cat by Gunning Down a Collie Named Sadie

Memorial in Honor of Sadie

"The time will come when men, such as I, will look upon the murder of animals as now they look upon the murder of men."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

Another companion animal has been deliberately and needlessly killed by a bloodthirsty member of the Harrisonburg Police Department (HPD). This time the victim was an eight-month-old, twenty-pound collie-mix named Sadie whose only crime was to run across the path of Sergeant Russell Metcalf.

Metcalf was riding his bicycle on Robinson Road in the Clover Hill section of town on April 3rd when Sadie wandered out into the road. Without further provocation, he immediately drew his service revolver and shot her between the eyes.

It has not been disclosed whether Metcalf was on patrol or off-duty at the time of the shooting. Since it would have been highly irregular for a sergeant to be assigned to bicycle duty, more than likely he was off-duty. Also, since he resides in nearby Dayton, which is only 3.2 kilometers south of Harrisonburg, he could have been either returning home or on his way to work.

An unidentified eyewitness later told the Daily News-Record of Harrisonburg on May 8th that although Sadie was indeed in the road she was not acting aggressively. (See "City Cop Charged in Dog Shooting.")

The eyewitness account of events is further buttressed by the testimony of Sadie's owner, forty-six-year-old Bryan Ware, who is on record as stating that she neither was aggressive nor intimidating. As for Metcalf, neither he nor the law firm of Aaron Cook, which is representing him, have publicly commented on the case.

Thousands of pedestrians and bicyclists, especially letter carriers and delivery personnel, are accosted by dogs every day but absolutely none of them of them take the expedient of pulling out guns and shooting them. To do so would not only be barbaric and cruel, but there simply are better ways of dealing with the unwanted attentions of dogs.

In this case, Metcalf was on his bike and likely could have outrun Sadie. If worse had come to worst, he could have used either water, noise, or some other nonlethal method of deterring her.

Even if Sadie had bitten him it is unlikely that she would have seriously injured him since she was such a small dog. Usually, it is only large, vicious dogs that are capable of seriously harming an adult.

Being an egomaniacal cop who is not accustomed to being crossed by any animal or human being, Metcalf likely felt insulted that Sadie had had the temerity to venture into his path and responded with murderous intent. He also very well could be a dog- hater with a long history of abusing members of the species.

Despite the magnitude of his crime, Metcalf was not immediately charged with any offense. Rather, it took the appointment of Shenandoah County district attorney Amanda McDonald Wiseley to even determine if a crime had been committed.

Eventually, she arrived at the inescapable conclusion that one indeed had been committed and on May 18th, more than six weeks after Sadie's murder, Metcalf was arrested by the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office and charged with one count of animal cruelty and one count of reckless use of a firearm. He was released on his own recognizance and his case, GC12002819-00, is scheduled to be heard at 2 p.m. on August 23rd in Rockingham County General District Court.

Neither the judge nor the prosecutor has been publicly named but presumably a local jurist will try the case while someone from Rockingham County district attorney Marsha Garst's staff will serve as prosecutor. Considering that police officers, prosecutors, and judges all belong to the same fraternity, it is highly unlikely that either the ends of justice will be served or that Sadie's murderer will be punished.

As the rusty and decrepit wheels of justice slowly began to turn Metcalf was taken off of active patrol and given a desk job. He will continue to live high on the hog, however, by drawing his full salary and all the lavish perks that go with being a police officer. If he were on duty when he killed Sadie, the taxpayers also will be on the hook for his legal expenses.

For whatever little it is worth, the HPD claims to have launched an internal investigation into the matter but anyone expecting it to do anything other than to close ranks behind Metcalf and to give him a clean bill of health is living in a dream world. That is a serious mistake not only in its own right but because this certainly is not the first time that Metcalf has taken the law into his own hands.

Specifically, the web site www.popehat.com reported on May 26th that he previously punched Griffin Strother Jr. in the face on February 9, 2002 while arresting his companion, Stephanie Thompson. (See "Where Are They Now? Russell Metcalf Edition.")

Strother in turn sued Metcalf for excessive use of force and violation of his civil rights in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, which sits in Harrisonburg, but Judge James H. Michael Jr., true to form, ruled in favor of his assailant on February 10, 2003. (A link to Michael's opinion can be found at popehat.)

Since a cop can no more change his modus operandi than a leopard can alter its spots, it is likely that Metcalf has a long history of abusing both animals and individuals. It is doubtful, however, that any of his prior abuses of authority ever will see the light of day at his upcoming trial.

Metcalf's unprovoked murder of Sadie marked the second time within a six-month span that a member of the HPD had brutally killed a companion animal. For example, on November 11th of last year twenty-five-year-old Jonathan N. Snoddy of Bridgewater, 3.2 kilometers south of Dayton, savagely bludgeoned to death an injured cat.

Run down and left for dead by a hit-and-run motorist who is still at large, the cat of unspecified sex, pedigree,description, and age was discovered by kindhearted Wayne Meadows of Settlers Lane. After failing to persuade the worthless and uncaring Harrisonburg SPCA, Animal Control, and several local veterinarians to intervene, he committed the monumental mistake of telephoning the HPD.

Although Snoddy easily could have driven the injured cat to a nearby veterinary clinic for treatment, he instead elected to beat it to a bloody pulp with his night stick. That unprovoked and sadistic attack, which consisted of fifteen to twenty blows to the head, was so violent and prolonged that it left Meadows' porch in shambles and drenched in blood.

As it now has done with Metcalf, the HPD claimed at the time to have opened an internal investigation into Snoddy's behavior but nothing further ever was heard about the matter. The no-account rotters who sit on the Harrisonburg City Council likewise chose to look the other way and to pretend that nothing untoward had occurred.

Under intense pressure from animal protection groups, the Virginia State Police belatedly decided to investigate the matter and that culminated in Snoddy's being charged on January 12th with one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty. Later on March 8th he was found guilty in Rockingham General District Court and fined a puny $50 by Judge Steven "stench of the bench" Helvin.

Despite his conviction, Snoddy was reinstated to active duty the last week of March by Chief of Police Donald Harper just days before he hightailed it into retirement. Prior to that, Snoddy, like Metcalf, had been relegated to a desk job but with full pay and benefits. (See Cat Defender post of March 22, 2012 entitled "In Another Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, Rogue Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Is Let Off with a $50 Fine for Savagely Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat.")

Long before the ink was even dry on Helvin's overly generous ruling, Snoddy's shysters, John C. Holloran and Bill Eldridge, were back in court on March 9th demanding a new trial. Since Virginia's legal and political establishment goes to such extraordinary lengths in order to protect and to defend its own members, that demand immediately was granted with Snoddy's new trial, this one before a jury of his peers, initially scheduled to have commenced  April 9th in Rockingham County Circuit Court with Judge James V. Lane presiding.

To put the matter in its proper perspective, it took the legal and political establishment in Harrisonburg two months in order to even bring charges against Snoddy and yet when it finally was forced into acting it turned around and with an alacrity seldom seen in judicial circles granted him two chances in order to clear his name within the span of a month. Normally, defendants are granted only one trial, either a bench or a jury hearing, and they are allowed that only after being forced to wait an average of, more or less, nine months. Even more outrageously, the poor who are unable to make bail are forced to cool their heels in the slammer until they finally are given their day in court.

The Virginia State Bar unexpectedly put the brakes on the Snoddy Express when it intervened and asked prosecutors in Rockingham County to recuse themselves due to a conflict of interest. Although better late than never, that is precisely what the Bar should have done from the outset and should do now in regard to Metcalf.

In their stead, Lane appointed Kenneth Lee Alger III, the head prosecutor in Page County, to retry Snoddy. Since he therefore required a measure of time in order to familiarize himself with the salient facts of the case, the trial was postponed until June 7th. (See Cat Defender post of April 26, 2012 entitled "Virginia's Disreputable Legal and Political Establishment Is All Set to Acquit Jonathan N. Snoddy at His Retrial for Brutally Beating to Death an Injured Cat.")

The contending parties unexpectedly were back in Lane's courtroom on May 31st for some additional legal wrangling at which time the case, CR12000307-00, was postponed yet again until July 30th. Thus, from going all-out in an effort to speedily exonerate Snoddy, Virginia's legal and political establishment now adroitly has reversed course and is committed to dragging out his retrial for as long as it takes until the public finally loses interest in it.

None of that is going to make any real difference in the long run because there simply is not any way that a jury comprised of a dozen of Snoddy's redneck buddies is going to convict him of killing a cat. The entire exercise is an elaborate charade designed to hoodwink the public into believing that a semblance of justice has been meted out.

The only remaining drama centers on Alger and how he will endeavor to purposefully lose the case while simultaneously safeguarding his reputation as a halfway honest public prosecutor. Just watching him attempt to pull off that leger de main should provide court watchers with a show that is part ventriloquism and part burlesque.

It additionally will be interesting to see if either the Daily News-Record or WHSV-TV will even bother to cover the trial. Animal rights groups already have washed their hands of the matter and no response, either way, is expected from any of them.

As for Metcalf, although it is conceivable that he could be convicted on both charges, he most assuredly will be let off, like Snoddy, with an insignificant fine. He then will ask for a new trial and eventually escape justice totally unscathed.

He will be allowed to either retain his job or to retire early with a full pension. Even under the latter scenario his friends within the legal and political establishment are certain to see to it that he is provided with another lucrative sinecure within either the public or private sectors.

Stephen Monticelli, formerly of the police department in Columbia, Missouri, has replaced the moribund Harper as chief but not only the killing of cats and dogs but the shielding of their murderers continues unabated. The HPD, quite obviously, is unwilling to mend its lawless ways and that alone makes outside scrutiny of its abhorrent record on both animal and civil rights an imperative.

Police abuse and disrespect for the sanctity of canine life is by no means confined to randomized acts of violence, such as the one perpetrated against Sadie. Rather, it is pretty much standard procedure for cops to shoot any dog that so much as growls at them.

For example, on June 10th an unidentified police officer responding to an incident in the 2400 block of North Fifty-Sixth Street in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia needlessly shot to death a dog after it had bitten a fellow officer on the wrist. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 11, 2012, "Officer Hospitalized with Dog Bite.")

The two officers and their colleagues certainly were capable of subduing the dog without killing it. After all, cops are confronted by dogs every day of the week and it accordingly is totally inexcusable that their departments do not have nonlethal contingency plans in place in order to humanely deal with them.

Officers additionally kill countless police dogs each year by deliberately siccing them on armed suspects that they are far too cowardly to confront themselves. These loyal and brave dogs thus go willingly to their executions never knowing either the mortal dangers involved or that they are breathing their last breaths on this earth.

In recent years there has been a spate of press reports concerning police dogs that have died from cancer. Although it never is disclosed how they contracted the disease, it possibly could be the result of being cooped up all day inside squad cars with officers who smoke like a chimney. (See Cat Defender post of October 19, 2007 entitled "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")

Even thirdhand smoke, defined as the contamination (arsenic, lead, cyanide, and other toxins) that is left behind on surfaces as well as that which seeps through shared air ducts and ventilation systems in apartment buildings and offices, is in all likelihood killing dogs, cats, and other animals that are imprisoned indoors. It already has been identified as being harmful to children but it is cats who, due to their incessant grooming, that are at the greatest risk. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 2012, "An Invisible Danger.")

Furthermore, deploying dogs in perilous rescue missions where the air is contaminated with pollutants and carcinogens could not possibly be beneficial to their long-term health. Although it has not been disclosed what killed them, of the one-hundred or so cadaver dogs employed at Ground Zero only a dozen of them were still alive a decade later. (See Daily Mail, September 5, 2011, "The 9-11 Rescue Dogs: Portraits of the Last Surviving Animals Who Scoured Ground Zero a Decade On.")

It is man who has created and perpetuates the ills, both domestic and international, that plague societies and accordingly it is he who should deal with them. To hoodwink totally innocent and naïve dogs into doing his dirty work for him is not only the very epitome of animal cruelty but cowardly as well. Yet, no animal rights group is willing to speak up on behalf of either police and rescue dogs or those nakedly exploited in combat zones.

Most police officers of today are no longer willing to either break a sweat or to dirty their uniforms. Instead, they rely upon guns, Tasers, and dogs in order to subdue and often kill both animals and suspects. (See Cat Defender posts of April 29, 2008 and April 8, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Orange County Sheriff's Department Is Accused of Killing a Cat with a Taser at the Theo Lacy Jail" and "Ohio Politician Proposes Adding Cats to the Growing List of Pigs, Other Animals, and Humans Killed by Tasers.")

Quickly resolving complicated social and legal dilemmas by summarily liquidating animals and humans also provides them with almost unlimited time in order to goldbrick, nefariously pad their time sheets with tons of overtime, and to collect all sorts of graft. All that it takes in order to kill either an animal or a suspect is a split second and life, especially in America, has become oh so very cheap.

Widespread and systematic police abuse and exploitation of dogs pales in comparison, however, with the utter contempt that they display for the sanctity of feline life. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008, September 16, 2009, July 8, 2010, and September 22, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo," "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey," "North Carolina State Trooper Who Illegally Trapped and Shot His Next-Door Neighbor's Cat, Rowdy, Is Now Crying for His Job Back," and "Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop.")

"The time will come when men, such as I, will look upon the murder of animals as now they look upon the murder of men," Leonardo da Vinci boldly predicted five-hundred years ago. In hindsight, it now appears that he greatly overestimated the capacity of his fellow man to learn from his mistakes and to advance both morally and intellectually.

Although some progress has been made, shelters and Animal Control officers still kill cats and dogs en masse and with impunity. Even more outrageously, police officers, such as Snoddy and Metcalf, not only kill cats and dogs but are protected by prosecutors, judges, and juries whose job it is to see to it that the law is not only upheld but advances with the times as well. As a consequence, Leonardo's vision remains as elusive as ever.

In any halfway just society the elites would be held to a higher standard of moral and legal conduct than ordinary citizens. In the United States, however, they are not only the most egregious lawbreakers but the biggest freeloaders to boot.

They get away with their heinous crimes while the poor and powerless are locked up and left to rot in the various hellhole institutions that comprise the prison industrial complex. Likewise, they live practically forever on generous health insurance plans and their bloated salaries while those who foot the bill for their lavish lifestyles are barely able to scratch out a living before being consigned to early graves.

The mistreatment and exploitation of animals is by no means confined to the elites; on the contrary, the masses also appear to becoming more callous with each passing day. For instance, no one even bothered to come forward in order to claim the remains of the forever nameless cat that was bludgeoned to death by the monster Snoddy.

Consequently, its remains in all likelihood were incinerated. It did not receive a scintilla of humane treatment in life and the way things now stand it is destined to be denied justice throughout all of eternity.

Sadie's tenure on this earth likewise was all-too-brief and ended every bit as tragically. Perhaps if Ware is persistent and forceful enough the courts can be prevailed upon to make Metcalf pay for his despicable crime but even that is real long shot.

Photo: WHSV-TV.

NBC-10 Philadelphia Conspires with a Virulent Cat-Hater and an Exterminator in Order to Have Six Newborn and Totally Innocent Kittens Killed in Southern New Jersey

A Pair of Kittens Rescued at Aloe Village

"I really appreciate the fact that Channel 10 (NBC Philadelphia) helped me and really helped all the neighbors. We couldn't do anything about it but you did and we thank you."
-- Evelyn Koegler

"The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it," Sherlock Holmes remarked to his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson, in Arthur Conan Doyle's story, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons. Although the great private detective only manipulated the Fourth Estate in order to serve the ends of truth and justice, cat-hating fanatic Evelyn Koegler is equally adept at inveigling it into doing her dirty work for her.

Fortunately situation with slimy tentacles and connections that extend far and deep into the bowels of the thoroughly corrupt and totally dishonest capitalist media, Koegler on June 5th prevailed upon Ted Greenberg of NBC-10 (WCAU) in Philadelphia to travel to her abode at the Aloe Village Senior Complex at 1311 West Aloe Street in Egg Harbor City, approximately twenty-seven kilometers north of Atlantic City, in order to grease the skids for a group of homeless cats living on the grounds. This was one chore that he was more than happy to assist with by filing a pair of scurrilous, one-sided, anti-cat screeds with his network.

In both of his reports, Greenberg never once uttered so much as a positive syllable about the cats; rather, he time and time again cavalierly dismissed them an nonentities unfit to go on living. Furthermore, his criminal behavior is made all the more unjust by the fact that the kittens never did anything to him and were not even living on his Grundstück. In other words, this sorry, miserable excuse for a human being went far out of his way in order to have their lives extinguished.

He did not stop there, however, but proceeded to abandon any pretense whatsoever of being an impartial journalist by taking it upon himself to call in private exterminator Raymond Lane of Animal Capture Control Services at 302 North Leipzig Avenue in Egg Harbor City who less than twenty-four hours later trapped and removed a half dozen kittens. "That's another six cats that aren't going to be breeding," he proudly declared to Greenberg and NBC-10 on June 6th. (See "Animal Control Helps Capture Feral Cats.")

True to his word, Lane promptly delivered the newborns to the notorious and despicable cat killing factory known as the Atlantic County Animal Shelter (ACAS) on Old Turnpike Road in Pleasantville where they were killed shortly after arrival. Totally lacking in anything even remotely resembling integrity, Greenberg deliberately withheld from his viewers so much as an inkling of what lay was in store for the kittens. Instead, he lied through his rotten teeth by telling them that they would be evaluated for adoption.

Only a few days old and with their eyelids still closed, the kittens' lives were snuffed out before they had been given so much as a brief chance to even gaze out upon the world. To make matters even more revolting, all of those involved in their murders have gotten away scot-free with their hideous crimes and never will be punished.

"Any kitten under the age of three to four weeks is in danger of starvation if they (sic) do not have the means to feed every two or three hours," shelter veterinarian Andrea Ceremele told Sharon Seltzer of Care2.com on June 13th. (See "Death of Six Kittens Brings Community Together.") "Unfortunately the shelter is inundated with young kittens. In the shelter setting we do our best to find alternatives to euthanasia. The amount of kittens we see typically outweighs our resources and so we are left with the only humane solution to prevent starvation."

Every word of Ceremele's spiel is a barefaced lie. Most glaringly, the kittens never were evaluated for adoption and no humane alternatives, of which there were plenty, ever were entertained. Moreover, that is the sad fate that awaits practically every cat and dog that enters ACAS.

The obvious solution would have been for Lane to have left them where they belonged, which was with their mother. There then would not have been any starvation concerns because, when left to its own devices, nature usually provides for its own.

Legitimate nursing problems only arise when a mother cat is killed and leaves behind a helpless litter. To put the matter succinctly, Lane and Ceremele created the very starvation crisis that she later employed as a totally bogus justification for having the kittens killed.

Having created the problem, Ceremele easily could have remedied it by ordering staffers to bottle-feed the kittens until they were old enough in order to consume regular cat food. Or, if that was not feasible, she could have placed them in foster care.

Furthermore, Ceremele's eagerness to serve as ACAS's reincarnation of Josef Mengele once again exposes everything that is so terribly wrong about the odious practice of veterinary medicine. There is, after all, a considerable difference between saving and respecting helpless animals and operating a death camp. (See Cat Defender post of June 26, 2012 entitled "A Family in Wiltshire Turns to Social Media and Leaflets in Order to Shame a Veterinary Chain and a Foster Parent into Returning Tazzy.")

None of those readily available humane alternatives were entertained because private exterminators, Animal Control officers, and shelters in southern New Jersey erroneously believe that they are endowed with a god-given right to liquidate homeless cats. Besides, that is how they earn their precious shekels.

Generally speaking, Animal Control officers in southern New Jersey are shadowy characters who usually go nameless and only can be contacted by either telephone or pager. Insulated from all moral, legal, and political constraints, some of them, in particular those that serve Atlantic City, have been accused in the past of shooting cats in the head instead of even handing them over to Ceremele and her henchmen.

As far as ACAS is concerned, anyone attempting to reclaim either a lost cat or dog would be well advised to secure the services of a competent lawyer before visiting the facility. Staffed by obnoxious and abrasive personnel who do not know the meaning of the word cooperation, ACAS is operated much like a garbage recycling center with the only discernible difference being that it traffics in live, sentient cats and dogs as opposed to inanimate refuse.

Police officers in the region likewise share Lane's and Ceremele's opinion that the only old good cat is a dead one. For example, in July of 2010, Lieutenant Robert Ketschek and officers Daniel Gleason and Jeffrey Mazer of the nearby Absecon Police Department ordered a colony of homeless cats to be trapped and killed. In doing so, they also stole the cats' feeding station and winterized shelters.

In September of the same year, the feeding station and shelters at another managed colony were picked up and hurled over a wooden fence into the parking lot of a local restaurant. One kitten was crushed to death during the commission of this violent hate crime. The culprits never were apprehended and two years later on rampaging cat-hating cops Ketschek, Gleason, and Mazer remain the only suspects.

The unconscionable murders of the six kittens at Aloe Village left Koegler leaping for joy and eternally grateful to Greenberg. "I really appreciate the fact that Channel 10 helped me and really helped all the neighbors," she cooed to NBC-10 in the article cited supra. "We couldn't do anything about it but you did and we thank you."

A day earlier she had pleaded with Greenberg to have the cats killed. "They need to go. It's too much for old people," she told NBC-10 on June 5th. (See "Senior Community Overrun with Feral Cats.") "I can't even get out here when they're here."

When Lane finally showed up with his traps, Koegler was ready to break out the champagne. "I am happy to see him," she declared in a video entitled "Animal Control Trying to Stop Feral..." that accompanies the June 5th article cited supra. "I've been anxious all day."

Statement such as those are prime examples of the grotesque hypocrisy, hatred, and bloodthirstiness that consumes the souls of some old people. Although Koegler is very much adept at squeezing every last second out of her miserable, wretched existence, she is totally unwilling to allow newborn, totally innocent kittens to live for so much as a day.

Throughout her long existence she has failed to grasp that life is for the living and, especially, those individuals and animals that have something to add to creation that is both beautiful and noble. It never was intended, however, for hate-filled, fat old hags like her who live only for their shekels and all the evil deeds that they can get away with committing before finally croaking and contaminating the soil with their putrid remains.

If the truth dare to be told, indefinitely prolonging the lives of the elderly constitutes a far greater burden on societies, the environment, and nature than would preserving and protecting all the animals in the world combined. It therefore does not seen unreasonable to ask that the aged respect the right of cats and other animals to go on living. That is not how the game is played in the land of the dollar bill, however, where reciprocity is almost unheard of and sharing is the dirtiest word in the American lexicon.

In support of her virulent campaign to have the cats liquidated, Koegler hastened to dredge up the old spurious charge that they are unhygienic. "It stinks back here," she complained to NBC-10 in the June 6th article cited supra. "You can't open the door because of the smell."

First of all, Aloe Village is covered in green grass and there are woodlands adjacent to it, so it is highly unlikely that the cats were eliminating on concrete. In fact, whenever either soil or grass are available cats always cover up their byproducts and that alone cuts down considerably on any obnoxious odors.


A Beautiful Mature Cat at Aloe Village


Au contraire, it is precisely their cleanliness that often gets them into trouble with gardeners and homeowners who object to their digging on their properties. (See Cat Defender post of August 19, 2010 entitled "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw.")

"A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it," Chicago short story writer and essayist Joseph Epstein once observed. Detractors of the species cannot have it both ways. Cats are either very clean animals or filthy slobs; they cannot be both.

Koegler's wild accusations are further called into question by climatological considerations. In particular, the rain has been coming down in torrents practically every day all across the region ever since the last week in April. The latest such round of violent weather occurred early June 30th when a derecho roared through the region and left in its wake extensive tree damage that extended weit und breit.

Under such conditions, any urine and feces left behind by the cats surely was quickly washed away. Furthermore, up until about a fortnight ago the weather had been unseasonably cool and waste products, like carrion, do not begin to smell until conditions become hot and dry. In short, if old Koegler was afraid to venture out of doors it surely was because of the rain, mosquitoes, flies, drug dealers, and muggers in the neighborhood, not the cats.

Even if feline urine and poop were a problem, Aloe Village has a maintenance staff that should have been directed to clean it up. More to point, fat-as-a-pig old Koegler could have burned off a few calories by undertaking the job herself.

Above all, a little errant feline urine is not a valid reason under any circumstances for killing cats. Only a die-hard ailurophobe ever would countenance such a morally repugnant course of action.

From slandering cats as being unclean, Koegler went on to ludicrously claim that she had been the victim of an unprovoked attack. "I was shooing them and one grabbed a hold of my fingers," she whined to NBC-10  on June 6th.

C'est-à-dire, she was attacking them and blames them for defending themselves. In virtually every case where a cat has been accused of attacking a human it later has been proven that it was precisely the Homo sapien who initiated the aggression.

Much more to the point, it is patently absurd for anyone to claim that they were set upon out of the blue by a cat, especially a skittish homeless one. (See Cat Defender posts of June 26, 2006, October 17, 2009, October 18, 2009, October 23, 2009, and August 24, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Lewis the Cat Cheats the Hangman but Is Placed Under House Arrest for the Remainder of His Life," "Bingo Is Placed Under House Arrest for Defending Himself Against a Neighbor Who Foolishly Intervened in a Cat Fight," "Minneapolis Is Working Overtime Trying to Kill an Octogenarian's Cat Named Hoppy for Defending His Turf Against Canine Intruders," "Essex Welfare Bum Who Sicced His Dog on Cats and Beat Them with His Cane Is Now Pretending to Be the Victim of an Assault," and "Self-Defense Is Against the Law in Australia after a Woman Who Attacked a Cat Gets Away with Her Crime Whereas Her Victim Is Trapped and Executed.")

Despite the killing of the six kittens, neither Koegler's nor Lane's thirst for feline blood could be slaked. "I'll come back tomorrow and check them (the traps) and I'll reset another two and we'll do two at a time," Lane vowed to NBC-10 in the June 6th article cited supra. "This way they don't get used to them as fast. You can actually get more the less traps you actually have."

Being the skilled trapper that he is, Lane planned on killing all of the estimated fifty to one-hundred cats that live on the property and in the surrounding woods and sans doute would have succeeded in doing so if it had not been for the timely intervention of Alley Cat Allies (ACA). "Six newborn kittens have been ripped from their mothers and euthanized at the shelter," the organization's Becky Robinson graphically explained to Care2.com in the article cited supra. "This cruel approach is not humane and it is not a solution."

Representatives of ACA then visited Aloe and were able to convince management, at least for now, to stop the killing and to adopt TNR. According to its June newsletter, ACA claims to have sterilized, vaccinated, and returned twenty-four adult cats to the complex as well as to have placed ten kittens in foster care. All totaled, ACA estimates that there are far fewer than fifty cats living in the area. (See "TNR Saves the Day for a New Jersey Colony.")

Having been caught red-handed and exposed for what she is, Koegler is now claiming that she never in her long life ever heard of TNR. In other words, this woman who is so clever, resourceful, and well-connected that she was able to entice both NBC-10 and Lane into killing six kittens for her now would have the world to believe that she is every bit as dumb as a post fence.

Anyone who has not been living underneath a rock for the past two decades certainly has heard plenty about TNR. More importantly, Koegler, Greenberg, and everyone else is fully cognizant of the undeniable fact that shelters are little more than thinly disguised cat killing factories.

In spite of all of that, Seltzer of Care2.com has chosen to strenuously shield and defend Koegler. Not only did she deliberately omit her surname from the article cited supra, but dishonestly maintains in the face of all facts and logic that her call to NBC-10 was "innocent" and that "she had no idea it would lead to the senseless death of six newborn kittens."

To top it all off, Seltzer also maintains that Koegler now is "thrilled" that a TNR program has been put in situ and that the cats are staying. While it is true that individuals occasionally experience epiphanies, to believe for one second that a virulent cat-hater like Koegler has changed her opinion about the cats is tantamount to passing off the fictitious notion that the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service have mended their evil and lawless ways and now love cats.

To its eternal shame and discredit, even ACA has signed on to Seltzer's deliberate obfuscation of the truth. "People are not aware of TNR and they do not know what happens to the animals when they call Animal Control," the organization's Aileen Walden vowed to Care2.com in the article cited supra. "The residents at Aloe Village wanted a way to defer the cats, not kill them."

Anyone naïve enough to believe so much as a word of either Seltzer's or Walden's lies needs only to view the above cited video that accompanies NBC-10's June 5th article and another one entitled "Senior Citizen Complex Overrun by Cats" which accompanies NBC-10's June 6th report. In both videos, Koegler's and Greenberg's virulent hatred for cats can be seen and heard oozing from their gaping maws in much the same fashion that raw, untreated sewage seeps from a backed-up septic tank.

ACA goes even further in its above cited June newsletter in order to lay on the lies and sottise with a trowel. To begin with, it outrageously defends Greenberg and NBC-10 for "thinking they were doing the right thing."

From that inauspicious beginning, it goes on to declare that "residents and property management overwhelmingly wanted help stabilizing the population humanely." It then concludes by saluting management for respecting the wishes of its tenants by accepting TNR.

Actually, there is a rather sharp division of opinion amongst residents of Aloe Village regarding the cats. On the one side of the issue is Koegler who not only has assisted Lane in trapping the cats but without a doubt still wants them gone, dead, and buried. On the other side of the battle line are those residents who not only have been feeding them but courageously and nobly releasing them from Lane's traps. Some of them even have gone so far as to confiscate a few of his snares.

They are the real heroes of this story. Thanks to their compassion, bravery, and defiance of the authorities, many cats and kittens who otherwise would have wound up at Ceremele's extermination camp are alive today. That is a wonderful accomplishment that they rightfully can be proud of for the remainder of their days.

Even ACA's claim that management now fully supports TNR is a bit dubious considering its past record in that regard. "The more we feed them the more they're going to keep coming back," ruthless manageress Jacqueline Collazo complained to NBC-10 in the June 5th article cited supra. "We have tried a lot of times to call to maybe get help to get them taken out of here but it seems like there aren't funds for anyone to come and take them out."

Quite obviously, doing the right thing never has entered into her diseased gourd. Any halfway compassionate and moral individual in her position immediately would have provided the cats with protection, shelter, veterinary care, food, and water. In the event that they had begun to multiply too fast, sterilization would have been the next logical step.


Kitten Killer and Dishonest Journalist Ted Greenberg


Colazzo did not do any of that and, according to Lane, has been practicing trap and kill for a long time in spite of her ludicrous claims of penury. "I've been trapping here for about three years," he admitted to NBC-10 in the June 6th article cited supra. "You can trap for a while and then the cats get used to the traps and won't get in them. You have to take breaks."

Specifically, in the June 5th interview with NBC-10 he admits to trapping and removing several cats in May. Doubtless to say, they also were done away with in short order by Ceremele and ACAS. Accordingly, the number of cats trapped and killed at Aloe Village just by Lane alone during the past three years surely must be in the dozens.

It also is quite obvious that he has not been working gratis and that somebody, most likely either Egg Harbor City or Colazzo, has been paying him. That quite naturally brings up the thought provoking question of the source of ACA's funding.

After all, sterilizing and vaccinating cats is not cheap and managed colonies require food, water, feeding stations, and winterized shelters. Volunteers additionally are needed to maintain the colony and ACA has its hands full already taking care of the Boardwalk cats in Atlantic City. Hopefully, ACA's disgraceful and totally inexcusable defense of Koegler, Colazzo, and NBC-10 does not mean that it has accepted money from any of those involved in killing cats and kittens at Aloe Village.

In addition to playing fast and loose with the truth, ACA always has been just a bit too preoccupied with promoting TNR at the expense of all other issues that affect cats. Most notably, only recently has it grudgingly begun to acknowledge that homeless cats are adoptable. Before that, adoption was verboten as far as ACA was concerned.

It additionally has shown precious little interest in demanding that the anti-cruelty statutes be rigorously enforced against individuals and organizations that abuse cats. Of particular concern are vivisectors, professors who abuse cats in order to collect data in support of their eradication schemes, and the machinations of ornithologists and wildlife biologists.

Protecting cats, both those with and those without legitimate guardians, involves a great deal more than just merely establishing a string of successful TNR colonies. Cats are under attack everywhere and any group that defends and enters into an entente of any sort with any of their abusers and killers is a fraud.

Most disturbing of all, ACA appears to have written off the murders of these six kittens as simply part of the cost of being in the business of TNR. That is terribly wrong and instead of defending their killers, ACA should be demanding that Koegler, Lane, Colazzo, Ceremele and, above all, Greenberg be arrested and jailed for their despicable crimes.

All feline lives are precious and even one death is one too many. If ACA wishes to continue to engage in arbitrage, the proper venue for such dishonest behavior is Wall Street. In defending cats against their many enemies, there is absolutely no room for games or moral arbitrage.

It is Greenberg, however, who is by far and away the worst villain in this sordid affair. Totally bankrupt when it comes to honesty, integrity, fairness, and morality, he abuses his position at NBC-10 for the sole purpose of pursuing his own evil designs.

Although he readily will deny that he is a cat-hater by pointing to his ownership of his own resident feline, Fred, but that is anything but conclusive. Some of the world's worst cat haters and abusers, such as Stanley A. Temple of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Linda Winter of the ABC, and Jonathan N. Snoddy of the Harrisonburg Police Department, all claim to be lovers of the species. Their type of affection is limited to the morbid kind, however, much like that of a necrophiliac's fondness for corpses.

If Ceremele can be said to be the poster girl for everything that is wrong with the practice of veterinary medicine, then Greenberg certainly qualifies as the poster boy for the dishonest way in which journalism is practiced in the United States. Moreover, the glaring fact that an utterly unprincipled scoundrel like him could get a job working for a major television network tells the world all that it ever needs to know about NBC-10 and the veracity of its news reporting.

Greenberg's deliberate smear job directed against the cats at Aloe Village recalls to mind a similar propaganda offensive launched against the homeless in Atlantic City in May of 2006. On that occasion, several Philadelphia television stations and Elaine Rose of The Press of Atlantic City got up in the middle of the night in order to lend a helping hand to policemen and firemen in Atlantic City, the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, and Jewish Family Services of Margate as they roused the sleepers and stole their meager possessions.

In particular, Rose in her May 25th account of the raid for the benefit of the readers of The Press never passed up an opportunity in order to denigrate, ridicule, defame, and makes jokes at the expense of the homeless. Like Greenberg's one-sided treatment of the cats, she did not have anything positive to say about the down-and-out. (See "Sweeps Catch Forty Living Under Atlantic City Boardwalk.")

Even more telling, all of those eking out an existence at the rough and tumble Underwood Hotel could have been housed, fed, and clothed for at least a month at a legitimate hotel for a fraction of what the capitalist media,  the predatory social services groups, and the fire and police spent abusing and defaming them. It is  sad to say, but that is how things are done in the United States.

Earlier in 2002, either an unidentified person or a group with connections similar to those of Koegler contacted Susan Sachs of The New York Times and persuaded her to venture to Atlantic City in order to denigrate the Chinese. The result was her June 21st article in which she labeled the Chinese as bums while simultaneously turning a blind eye to all the other groups that behave in a similar fashion. (See "Atlantic City's Lowest Rollers: Thrifty Older Immigrants.")

Countless other examples could be cited of the capitalist media's dishonesty in both domestic as well as international affairs but that would be to belabor the point. It is sufficient to point out that the capitalist media in America are tools of certain powerful individuals and groups who nakedly abuse their positions in order to attack certain animals and unpopular groups. Meanwhile, their media monopolies, power, and money insulates them from all criticism and accountability.

They therefore are free to commit their slanders, libels, and crimes with impunity. In America, the crème de la crème seldom, if ever, rises to the top; instead, it is the flotsam and the jetsam of the human race that run the show.

It also is worth pointing out that Greenberg holds a piddling little degree in criminal justice from Richard Stockton College. For the uninitiated, Stockton is a notorious, scandal-ridden degree mill located close to Aloe Village in Galloway Township where it owns thousands of acres of land. In their quest to become as rich and as powerful as King Midas, the oligarchs who rule the roost at Stockton have acquired of late several valuable properties across southern New Jersey, including the Seaview Marriott which each June hosts the ShopRite LPGA Classic.

It additionally is the school of choice for numerous individuals who want to study criminal justice. They then use their degrees in order to secure sinecures as police officers and, at least some of them, go on from there to abuse and kill cats. In Greenberg's case, he apparently deduced that he could defame, abuse, and kill more cats by taking up journalism than by becoming a cop.

As for Stockton's own bloated and fascist police force, its principal occupation is harassing, abusing, and violating the civil rights of individuals who dare to venture too close to its sprawling campus. It even has gone so far as to deny access to public highways in the area.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the numerous cats abandoned on its campus by its totally irresponsible students are either left to starve and freeze to death in the wintertime or systematically abused and later liquidated by administrators. Furthermore, concerns also have been raised about the school's mistreatment of its large deer population and other wildlife. All of these alleged abuses need to be investigated but no one should hold either his or her breath waiting for ACA to act.

Although it is by no means clear what types of courses Stockton offers in the field of criminal justice, it is a foregone conclusion that civil liberties, the rule of law, and animal rights are not part of the curriculum. Rather, the school appears to be dedicated to the promotion of their antitheses.

When viewed against the harsh political and economic realities that shape life in southern New Jersey, the cold-blooded murders of the six kittens at Aloe Village should not have come as any surprise. The media, as represented by Greenberg and NBC-10, public and private exterminators, ACAS, the police, and Stockton College comprise a closed circle of totally unaccountable and lawless elites who do with cats as they please. It is this group of exploiters, usurpers, thugs, and cat killers that ACA now has voluntarily chosen to join.

In conclusion, the next time that anyone tunes in to NBC-10 and Greenberg's ugly, dishonest visage pops up on their screen they hopefully now will view him in an entirely different light. Specifically, they should see him as being drenched from head to toe in the blood of the six innocent kittens whose cold-blooded murders he deliberately and unconscionably orchestrated. That is destined to become his legacy as both a journalist and as a man.

Photos: Care2.com (kittens), ACA (orange cat), and Facebook (Greenberg).