A South Dakota Police Officer Is Unmasked, Fired, and Arrested for Shooting Cats but It Is Highly Unlikely That He Will Be Punished or That This Will Be the Last of These Illegal Executions

The Cat-Killing Fields of North Sioux City

"A pile of two or three cats and it was hard to tell because of the turkey vultures. My cat was on top with a whole hole from a gunshot wound I imagined."
-- John Clarey

It all began innocuously enough on May 5th when a black and white indoor cat belonging to John Clarey and his girlfriend Morgan Bernard mysteriously vanished from their residence on Alcoma Drive in North Sioux City, twelve kilometers northwest of Sioux City. At first they thought that the cat would eventually turn up but when Clarey spied a trap and a cage in the backyard of his neighbor, forty-year-old Matt R. Vanderpool of 2 Alcoma Drive, his optimism quickly morphed into suspicions of foul play.

He accordingly filed a complaint with the North Sioux City Police Department (NSCPD) but that initiative did not get him anywhere. He also contacted the Siouxland Humane Society (SHS) in Sioux City where the police are supposed to take cats that they pick up but that organization informed him that it had not recently received any new arrivals from North Sioux City.

Additional time ticked off the clock without there being any sign of Clarey and Bernard's missing cat. Finally on May 8th, thirty-five-year-old Derek McIntosh of the NSCPD turned up at Vanderpool's residence in order to investigate the theft of a trap. What transpired next is not exactly clear but apparently Vanderpool implicated Clarey in the theft of the trap and that in turn led to McIntosh paying a visit to the latter's residence.

The particulars of that encounter have not been delved into by the local media but suffice it to say that Clarey was not charged with stealing the trap. During the course of their conversation, however, he queried McIntosh concerning his missing cat whereupon he was informed that those without collars and tags are sometimes taken to McCook Cemetery on Cemetery Road and released.

Pursuant to that revelation, Clarey traveled to the burial ground where he soon spotted a flock of turkey vultures hovering overhead. He then followed a dirt path out of the cemetery into the woods where he, at long last, graphically found out what had become of his and Bernard's beloved resident feline.

"A pile of two or three cats and it was hard to tell because of the turkey vultures," he related to KMEG-TV of Sioux City on May 14th. (See "Investigation Underway Following Reports of Dead Cats in North Sioux City.") "My cat was on top with a whole hole from a gunshot wound I imagined."

He also found a pair of purple latex gloves like those worn by officers of the NSCPD and some cat food. The presence of the latter, most likely cheap kibble, would tend to imply that the cats' killer had either removed them from their cages and then shot them while they were eating or that it was leftover bait.

Regardless of how that the cats actually met their Waterloos, it is difficult to imagine a more gruesome and disturbing discovery for any owner to have made and at such a desolate location to boot. "My sister immediately got the chief (of police) and the investigation ensued," Clarey told KMEG-TV.

The very next day, Captain Dustin Sharkey was headed to Vanderpool's residence in order to once again pick up yet still another cat that had been trapped when Officer Stephanie Ryan reportedly told him that he had "just saved that cat's life." When he asked her to explain that rather cryptic remark she reportedly informed him that she had heard from Officer Andrew Ryan (relationship unclear) that McIntosh was taking cats to McCook and shooting them.

Sharkey then questioned Andrew Ryan who in turn informed him that McIntosh had told him that he had indeed taken Clarey and Bernard's cat to McCook where he had released it. "At least you didn't shoot it," Ryan reportedly responded.

Derek McIntosh Shot and Killed an Undisclosed Number of Cats

It was at that point that McIntosh came clean and admitted that he not only had shot that particular cat but also an unspecified number of others as well in the past. He also informed Ryan that he was planning on returning to the cemetery in order to dispose of the evidence.

Sharkey then relayed that information to Chief of Police Richard Headid and later in the day the two of them traveled to McCook where they found the corpses of the two cats as well as the discarded gloves. All of those items then were bagged and returned to headquarters as evidence.

At 3 p.m. on that same day McIntosh was summoned to a meeting that was presided over by city administrator Ted Cherry. Also at that gathering were Headid and Mayor Randy Fredericksen.

Under interrogation, McIntosh at first denied shooting Clarey and Bernard's cat but fessed up to having shot an unspecified number of others. At which point Cherry placed him on administrative leave.

Belatedly realizing that the game was all but up, McIntosh finally came clean. "Okay, I did shoot the cat," he reportedly told Cherry according to a KMEG-TV report on May 15th.  (See "Former North Sioux City Cop Charged in Death of Neighborhood Cat.")

Cherry then either fired him on the spot or shortly thereafter. Equally importantly, he did not let the matter drop there.

"Our police department has finished the investigation into the situation with the cats and we've turned all of it over to the Union County State's Attorney," he informed the Sioux Falls Argus Leader on May 16th. (See "South Dakota Police Officer Accused of Shooting Cats in Cemetery.")

Actually, a warrant for McIntosh's arrest had been issued a day earlier on May 15th by Aaron J. Bates, deputy State's Attorney for Union County. "Affiant believes that the crime(s) of Animal of Another -- Kill or Injure, Disobedience of Judicial Process has-have been committed and that the defendant, Derek McIntosh, is the one who probably committed that crime and there is sufficient basis for the issuance of the warrant for arrest in this case," the accompanying affidavit, which was filed in the First Judicial Circuit Court of South Dakota in Elk Point, twenty-five kilometers northwest of North Sioux City, states. (A copy of it can be found with the May 15th KMEG-TV article cited supra.)

The principal reason that McIntosh was not indicted on multiple charges of animal cruelty is that it is not illegal to kill homeless cats in North Sioux City. Secondly, although "several" residents had complained to KMEG-TV on May 14th about missing cats, Clarey and Bernard are, apparently, the only ones to have officially lodged complaints against McIntosh and the NSCPD.

Owing to the malfeasance of the suck-ups within the local media, not much is known about him other than that he resides in apartment 203 at 204 Coyote Place and is a registered Republican who once at least toyed with the idea of running for sheriff of Union County against longtime incumbent Dan Limoges. He graduated from South Sioux City High School, fourteen kilometers southeast of North Sioux City in the neighboring state of Nebraska, in 2004 and joined the NSCPD at some unknown date thereafter.

Dustin Sharkey Investigated McIntosh

During his tenure with the department, he at one time served as a school resource officer at Dakota Valley Elementary School; c'est-à-dire, all the while that he was turning on the smiles and charms for the little kids he was busily gunning down their cats behind their backs. He also served on the Dakota Valley Board of Education alongside his boss, Headid.

Although McIntosh richly deserves the same bullets and buzzards brand of retribution that he meted out to his totally innocent victims, Clarey and Bernard should not expect too much in the way of justice for their murdered cat when, and if, his case finally comes to trial.  That is because under Title 40, Chapter 1, Section 1 of South Dakota's Codified Laws of 2012 the killing of an animal belonging to another person is regarded as a Class 1 misdemeanor and a conviction carries with it a maximum penalty of only one year in jail and a fine of US$2,000. McIntosh need not worry about any of that, however, in that he surely will not spend so much as a single day behind bars and the most that his dastardly crimes are going to cost him out of pocket are court and attorneys' fees.

For example, after Jonathan N. Snoddy savagely bludgeoned to death an already injured cat on Settlers Lane in Harrisonburg back on November 11, 2011 the entire legal and political establishment in Virginia closed ranks behind him and improvised every low-down, dirty, unprincipled, and dishonest trick in the book in order to save both his liberty and job. (See Cat Defender posts of March 22, 2012, April 26, 2012, and August 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "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," "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," and "Cat-Killing Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Struts Out of Court as Free as a Bird Thanks to a Carefully Choreographed Charade Concocted by Virginia's Despicable and Dishonest Legal System.")

Even when he was arrested McIntosh likely was issued a desk appearance ticket and spared even having to post a security bond. Even more importantly, when he is finally forced to face the music Bates in all likelihood will not go after him with anything more potent than a wet noodle.

After all is said and done, he likely will land another job with a nearby police department where he will resume shooting cats. In the unlikely event that should not prove feasible, the private sector abounds with business owners who love nothing better than to hire ex-cops, no matter how dirty and tainted. To make a long story short, cop-lovers should not squander their tears and sad songs on a low-life, scumbag like McIntosh but rather save them for those officers who are truly deserving of them.

Even his unmasking as a brutal and sadistic serial cat killer has not damaged McIntosh's standing with some residents of North Sioux City. "Derek has stated that he did euthanize the cat and he did so at the time, according to Derek, believing it was (in) the best interest of the North Sioux City Police Department and the community," Robert Pierson, who lives next-door to McIntosh in apartment 204 at 204 Coyote Place, averred to KMEG-TV on May 14th. "I think the world of Derek. He walks around with his own dog. He has a bulldog. He takes care of my dog when I'm away. His faithful companion is always by his side."

That pretty well says it all in that dog-lovers seldom have any regard for either cats or their owners. Also, with his Janus-faced personality and love of guns and vicious dogs, McIntosh fits to a tee the profile of an extremely dangerous redneck.

The only element missing from his repertoire is a pickup truck and he may even drive one or more of them. Even more alarming, this country is brimming over with individuals like him and many of them are allowed to wear badges and to carry guns.

The only thing that is truly odd about this entire affair has been the astonishing willingness of Headid, Sharkey, the Ryans, Cherry, and Fredericksen to throw McIntosh underneath the bus. As the case against Snoddy and countless other cat-killing cops has more than amply demonstrated time and time again, the normal protocol is for all departments and the political elites that they serve to rally behind officers who break the law and to stonewall all public inquiries.

That in turn leads to the suspicion that the NSCPD and the city itself are sacrificing McIntosh in order to cover up their own malfeasance. That is to say, the real culprits behind North Sioux City's wholesale abuse and slaughter of cats are the politicians who have enacted draconian anti-roaming and licensing ordinances that in turn have created a fertile environment for the emergence and flourishing of cat-killing monsters like McIntosh and, possibly, other members of the NSCPD.

Andrew Ryan Knew of the Killings

For example, "an animal found at large shall be seized and impounded with the Siouxland Humane Society in Sioux City, Iowa, or at the discretion of the Animal Control officer or his or her designee the owner may be served a citation and-or complaint to appear before a magistrate court to answer charges made by the officer," city ordinance 6.12.020-A stipulates. "If the owner of the impounded animal can be identified, that person shall be notified within two days and the animal returned upon payment of the impounding fees plus (the) cost of food and care of the animal," ordinance 6.12.020-B adds.

Cats without collars and tags, however, do not have so much as a prayer in Hell of being allowed to go on living in that ordinance 6.12.030-A stipulates that at the discretion of either the Animal Control officer or SHS they can be either killed or adopted by someone else. The most obvious problem with such an inhumane ordinance is that officers of the NSCPD do not have scanners in order to check for the presence of implanted microchips.

Given that chips have largely supplanted collars and tags as the preferred method of identifying cats, officers who liquidate them in the field, such as McIntosh and Snoddy, do not have any way of knowing for certain that they are not killing someone's beloved companion. Moreover, the only sure-fire way of avoiding such mistakes is for municipalities to outlaw the killing of all cats under all circumstances regardless of their socio-economic status.

Instead of acknowledging the logical and moral imperative, the NSCPD stubbornly has adopted a policy that calls for all sickly, injured, and unfriendly cats to be killed on the spot. For instance, "any animal which appears to be suffering from rabies or infected with disease, or which is mortally injured, or which in the opinion of the administrative authority is vicious, shall not be adopted or released, but shall be immediately destroyed in a humane manner," ordinance 6.12.030-B mandates.

First of all, nobody can make a diagnosis of rabies in the field and all individuals and municipalities, such as North Sioux City, that claim differently are inveterate liars. Au contraire, the only way that such a determination can be made is for cats suspected of carrying the disease to be humanely trapped and placed under observation for ten days.

Secondly, that particular ordinance amounts to nothing less than bestowing upon every police officer in North Sioux City a carte blanche authority to kill any and all cats on sight. Moreover, case after case has demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that cats can be every bit as healthy as a horse and trigger-happy cops are nonetheless going to shoot them and afterwards swear upon a stack of Bibles that they were either rabid, near dearth, or too vicious to be humanely trapped.

For example, that is precisely what an unidentified officer in Cecil, Pennsylvania, did to Roger Oldaker's ten-year-old Persian, Elmo in 2008. (See Cat Defender post of March 31, 2008 entitled "A Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes a Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo.")

A year later the police in Raymore, Missouri, made up an even greater litany of outrageous lies in order to justify their killing of Kelly Wesner's cat, Tobey. (See Cat Defender post of September 16, 2009 entitled "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, the Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey.")

On August 20, 2011, a cop in Lebanon, Ohio, murdered Dori Stone's beloved Haze and afterwards dishonestly claimed that he was, inter alia, rabid. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2011 entitled "The Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop.")

On August 20, 2014, the cops in Gorham, Maine, blasted a cat named Clark that Deb Webb had been caring for with a shotgun and later amateurishly attempted to justify their criminal behavior by claiming that he, too, was rabid. (See Cat Defender post of September 27, 2014 entitled "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun.")

Richard Headid Broke the Law

In North Catasauqua, police officer Leighton Pursell intentionally executed Tom Newhart's perfectly healthy cat, Sugar, on December 6, 2015 and afterwards ludicrously claimed that she was seriously injured. Not only did he get away scot-free with his crime but he already had another job waiting for him with the force in nearby Coplay long before the criminal proceedings against him even had been concluded. (See Cat Defender post of September 1, 2016 entitled "The Legal and Political Establishment in a Small Pennsylvania Backwater Closes Ranks and Pulls Out All the Stops in Order to Save the Job and Liberty of the Bloodthirsty Cop Who Murdered Sugar" and The Orange County Register of Anaheim, August 23, 2017, "Police Are Shooting a Shocking Number of People's Pets.")

Even injured cats that cannot be either darted or captured by means that would not be hazardous to officers are to be killed on the spot according to North Sioux City ordinance 6.12.050-C. Like preceding ordinances 6.12.030-A and 6.12.030-B, this one amounts to little more than a declaration of war on all cats.

First of all, it is almost unheard of for a cop to tranquilize a cat. With that being the case, it is not all that surprising that few if any of them are willing to devote the time, effort, and patience that humanely trapping one entails.

The same holds true for cats that are deemed to be so seriously injured that their recovery is either "improbable or unlikely" under ordinance 6.12.050-D. Part E of the same ordinance even goes so far as to bestow upon cops the right to shoot felines at the urging of veterinarians.

Oddly enough, there is not so much as a scintilla of evidence in the public record to even remotely suggest that any member of the NSCPD has ever transported any sick or injured cat to a veterinarian for emergency treatment. What would be the point anyway?

Veterinarians that are willing to treat ailing cats without first being paid a bushel basket's worth of shekels up-front are about as rare as hens' teeth. (See Cat Defender posts of July 16, 2010 and March 19, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Tossed Out the Window of a Car Like an Empty Beer Can, an Injured Chattanooga Kitten Is Left to Die after at Least Two Veterinarians Refused to Treat It" and "The Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital.")

As far as the NSCPD's footing the bill for the emergency care of any cat is concerned, that is totally out of the question. Given that North Sioux City is saddled with a small tax base of only twenty-five-hundred residents, the overzealous enforcement of its anti-roaming and licensing ordinances contributes a significant percentage of its operating budget and with that being the case it is not about to spend so much as a solitary sou on medicating sick and injured cats, establishing a shelter of its own, putting in place an adoption program, and implementing a TNR program. C'est-à-dire, its raison d'être is to financially exploit and liquidate cats, not to help them.

Although perhaps not germane as far as the conduct of the NSCPD is concerned, cops elsewhere around the world do not hesitate to shoot cats even while they are off-duty, to run them down with their cruisers, and to sic their canine partners on them. (See Cat Defender posts of July 8, 2010, July 18, 2015, and July 2, 2015 entitled, respectively, "A North Carolina State Trooper Who Illegally Trapped and Shot His Next-Door Neighbor's Cat, Rowdy, Is Now Crying for His Job Back," "Harry Is Run Down and Killed by a Pair of Derbyshire Police Officers Who Then Steal and Dispose of His Body in an Amateurish Attempt to Cover Up Their Heinous Crime," and "After Allowing One of Their Dogs to Maul McGuire to Within an Inch of His Life, the Toronto Police Do Not Have Even the Common Decency to Summon Veterinary Help for Him.")

Large cats, already falsely imprisoned and unspeakably abused by zoos, circuses, the entertainment industry, and others, furnish cops with a golden opportunity to go on impromptu urban safari hunts. (See Cat Defender posts of January 28, 2008, May 5, 2008, and November 3, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, Trio Taunted Tatiana Prior to the Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by the Police," "Chicago's Rambo-Style Cops Corner and Execute a Cougar to the Delight of the Hoi Polloi and the Capitalist Media," and "Sheriff Matt Lutz Settles an Old Score by Staging a Great Safari Hunt That Claims the Lives of Eighteen Tigers and Seventeen Lions in Zanesville.")

Animal Control Officers, most often cops themselves, kill scores of cats and other animals in the field and with impunity. Furthermore, their victims are not even included in the kill-rates periodically released by the operators of shelters.

For instance in Ridgeville, Ohio, Barry Accorti executed five kittens in 2013 that later became known as the "Woodpile Five." (See The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, June 11, 2013, "North Ridgeville Clears Humane Officer of Wrongdoing for Killing Feral Kittens but Animal Groups Want Action.")

Ted Cherry Fired McIntosh

It was not until he had trained his revolver on a raccoon and a group of rabbits, however, that he finally was fired. (See The Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria, articles dated June 10, 2014 and May 25, 2017 and entitled, respectively, "Parent Alleges Humane Officer Killed Raccoon in Front of Kids" and "Humane Officer in North Ridgeville Fired for Killing Rabbits.")

Even when they are not actually shooting cats Animal Control officers often kill them through abject neglect. For example, forty-one-year-old Michelle A. Mulverhill crawled in the bottle and left the cats and dogs that she cared for in Oxford, Massachusetts, to die of heat exhaustion, hunger, and thirst during the torrid summer of 2006. (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2006 entitled "An Animal Control Officer Goes on a Drunken Binge and Leaves Four Cats and a Dog to Die of Thirst, Hunger, and Heat at a Massachusetts Shelter.")

Although on its web site the NSCPD claims to investigate cruelty to animals that is highly unlikely in that it is far too busy jailing and killing cats to ever be concerned with tracking down others who mistreat them. Some would label such a policy as the professional courtesy that one band of criminals extends to another like-minded group of thugs.

The attitude that just about all cops harbor in their malignant bosoms toward cats is perhaps best exemplified by that shown by Aram Thomasian Jr., chief of police in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, in regard to the attempted drowning of a kitten known as Lucky Girl. On June 1, 2006, the town's sewer commissioner, Laurence E. Thayer, was drowning her in a bucket of water on his lawn when forty-two-year-old Christine Hill intervened and saved her life.

Even though drowning cats is illegal in the Bay State, Animal Control officer Douglas J. Blood refused to prosecute Thayer. Thomasian's attitude was even more inexcusable.

"He dealt with the problem the best he could," he idiotically bellowed. "Back in their day, that's what they did."

In that light, it would be interesting to know if he would be willing to also grandfather homicide and rape into the laws of the commonwealth? As for Thayer, he was anything but chastened by his unmasking as a serial kitten killer.

"I didn't know it was against the law," he pleaded. "I've been doing it for a hundred years." (See Cat Defender post of July 3, 2006 entitled "Crooked Massachusetts Cops Allow an Elderly Politician to Get Away with Attempting to Drown a Kitten Named Lucky Girl.")

In addition to the law enforcement community's unforgivable crimes against cats and their owners, three-hundred-thirty cops in Philadelphia were recently exposed by the Plain View Project as having made racist and intolerant comments on Facebook. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, articles dated June 1, 2019 and June 5, 2019 and entitled, respectively, "Group Catalogs Racist, Intolerant Facebook Posts by Hundreds of Philly Police Officers" and "Facebook Posts by Racist Cops: How Other Locations in Database with Philly Are Reacting.")

Although North Sioux City and its rogue police force are clearly guilty of criminally exploiting and killing countless cats, they are far from being the only rotters in the community's woodpile. For instance, it appears that Vanderpool is using the NSCPD as his private extermination service in order to rid his neighborhood of all cats.

With that being the case, there is not any way of knowing how many cats that he has sentenced to die of bullet wounds to the head. Even more revolting, his behavior is apparently beyond the scope of the laws as they are not constituted and that makes for a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Fredericksen Works for McCook

Even so, the inveigling of cops and Animal Control officers to do their dirty work for them is an age-old tactic of inveterate ailurophobes. It was, after all, mendacious neighbors who first sicced the cops on Elmo, Tobey, Haze, Clark, and Sugar and there certainly are plenty more of their kind lying in wait all across the world in order to grease the skids for countless additional cats.

On those rare occasions when they are unable to induce the cops into playing ball, they are more than willing to trap their neighbors' cats themselves and then to hand them over on silver platters to obliging shelters to kill. (See Cat Defender posts of October 30, 2006, March 9, 2007, August 19, 2010, and August 26, 2010 entitled, respectively, "A Collar Saves Turbo from Extermination after He Is Illegally Trapped by Bird-Loving Psychopaths," "A Long Island Serial Cat Killer Is Guilty of Only Disorderly Conduct, a Corrupt Court Rules," "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw," and "In Stark Contrast to Ailurophobic America, Ziegelchen's Illegal Trapping by a Gardener in Altstädten-Burbach Is Roundly Condemned in Deutschland.")

Then there is the mysterious and unexplained relationship that North Sioux City has with the SHS in Sioux City to consider. First of all, how many cats does the latter annually accept from North Sioux City and how much does it charge for providing that service?

Since McIntosh was liquidating cats at McCook and even Headid is on record as supporting, at the very least, their release there, it sure does not look like that the SHS has been taking in very many of them from North Sioux City. Besides, it is very doubtful that those few that it does accept ever get out alive.

The "Siouxland Humane Society takes great pride in finding forever homes for one-hundred per cent of adoptable pets," the organization proudly declares on its web site. That is a grotesquely dishonest declaration, however, in that cats labeled as unsocialized, sickly, and injured are deemed by most shelters to be unadoptable.

"We do not euthanize pets because we are full or to make space," the SHS next declares. Whereas that statement could be technically accurate, what the shelter does instead is to stop admitting any new inmates and thereby leaving them to the mercy of the NSCPD and others to liquidate for it. (See the Sioux City Journal, March 6, 2008, "No More Room for Unwanted Pets.")

"Pets that are hard for us to place find homes because of increased funding of our spay-neuter program, veterinary services program, and our placement efforts with other shelters or rescue groups," the SHS boasts on its web site. "We also bring pets from other shelters and rescue groups when we have space so they are not euthanized."

Although that sounds rather impressive, none of it would appear to have spilled over to North Sioux City which does not provide so much as an iota of sterilization, veterinary care, and adoption services for its homeless cats. Instead, its police officers take them to McCook and shoot them.

It additionally is patently dishonest for the SHS not to disclose both its intake data and, especially, its kill-rate. Rather, it is playing a sucker's game with members of the public, most of whom do not possess advanced degrees in hermeneutics, whereby it is constantly tap dancing all around the truth but never really saying anything that is even halfway truthful.

It additionally does not take cruelty to cats seriously. Most egregiously, it apparently did not lift so much as a lousy finger in order to bring to justice the son of a bitch who blinded Grace in her left eye by firing a nail into her brain in 2010.

All that it ever did was to wallow in a boxcar load of self-righteous moral indignation that even it does not believe. "Those who committed this terrible torturous act against a helpless animal must be caught and held accountable," the organization's Jerry Dominicak bellowed at the time. "We hope a reward of this size (a minuscule US$3,500) will help law enforcement find and punish him or her to the fullest extent of the law."

McIntosh's Smiles Are for Real; He Will Not Be Punished

As it has been noted so many times before, offers of rewards and expressions of hope do not solve animal cruelty cases; rather, that herculean task requires the expenditure of large sums of money, manpower, and the rigorous application of the established principles of sound detective work. (See Cat Defender posts of June 1, 2010 and July 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Grace Survives Being Shot Point-Blank Between the Eyes by a Monster with a Nail Gun but the Authorities in Sioux City Refuse to Even Investigate the Attack" and "Grace Is Out of the Hospital and Has a New Home but Her Nail Gun Assailant Remains as Free as a Bird Thanks to the Authorities' Dereliction of Duty.")

The road ahead for North Sioux City is clear but it remains to be seen if there exists a sufficient number of responsible citizens who are going to be willing to forsake living in the Dark Ages and therefore to demand that both the NSCPD and City Hall be radically reformed. First of all, since he authorized the dumping of cats at McCook in violation of city ordinances, Headid must be fired.

That is in addition to his failure to properly supervise the conduct of the officers under his command. In New York City, for example, every time that an officer so much as draws his weapon it must be reported to headquarters. Yet in North Sioux City McIntosh shot and killed countless cats and Headid did not even bother to hold him accountable for all the ammunition that he expended in doing so.

Although Sharkey is to be commended for initiating the investigation into McIntosh, that does not automatically let him off the hook. Whether or not he keeps his job should depend upon what he did with the cats that he trapped for Vanderpool and others.

It is unclear how long that Stephanie and Andrew Ryan knew of McIntosh's cat-killing ways, but since they failed to report him to Headid they also must be fired. Fredericksen, who serves on the Board of Trustees at McCook, likely also knew of McIntosh's criminal and inhumane conduct and he therefore should be immediately recalled from office by the voters.

Cherry should be given the choice of either working to repeal North Sioux City's anti-roaming and licensing laws or he, too, should be thrown out of office. Instead of shooting cats, the new blood that takes the helm at both the NSCPD and City Hall should invest in sterilization, TNR, and adoption services. The city additionally direly needs a cat sanctuary of its own.

Looking at the situation from a much broader perspective, time and experience have demonstrated that cops, Animal Control officers, and the operators of conventional shelters should not, under penalty of law, be allowed to come within three-hundreds meters of any cat. All that any of them are good for is defaming and killing them. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock. Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Possible Remedy? Keep Them Out.")

The management of all matters relating to cats therefore should be left to the volunteers who feed, house, and sterilize them and bona fide, cat-only rescue groups with impeccable credentials. Besides being pathological liars, conventional shelters and rescue groups always favor dogs over cats because, first of all, they do not particularly care for the latter. Secondly, they are able to make much more money selling impounded dogs back to the public than they can by doing likewise with cats.

An reprehensible as the policies and conduct of both the NSCPD and the politicians in North Sioux City are, they are far from being anomalies; on the contrary, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that just about every single municipality in the United States allows its police and Animal Control officers to shoot cats in the field. Even more damning, humane groups and the local representatives of the capitalistic media are most assuredly aware of these atrocities and yet they remain silent.

Finally if they have not done so already, Clarey and Bernard have a moral duty to file a civil lawsuit against North Sioux City for stealing and killing their cat. While they are at it they additionally should demand that its remains be returned to them so that they can provide it with a memorial service, a proper burial, and a tombstone.

McIntosh's dumping of its corpse in the woods for the buzzards to dispose of was indignity enough, but allowing the NSCPD to indefinitely refrigerate its remains before once more dumping them would be an even greater affront. Besides, the force has gotten away with the commission of too many heinous crimes against the species already and it accordingly is high time that it was stopped dead in its tracks and held accountable in any way, big or small, that is even remotely feasible.

Photos: Find a Grave (McCook) and North Sioux City (McIntosh, Sharkey, Ryan, Headid, Cherry, and Fredericksen).