How Animal Control Gets Away With Taking Your Dogs
and How To Fight Back
CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED THEFT IN DOG SEIZURE CASES
Many people believe that the
government seizure of animals is
unconstitutional. In reality, government
seizure of personal property has been
around as long as we have had a country.
Some of the first seizure actions by our
in the war on drugs have gone unnoticed
by the public and when it was make
public, people just didn’t care. Generally
there isn’t much sympathy for criminals
when bad things happen to them. There
wasn’t any public outrage and people
felt insulated from the government’s
conduct because it would never happen
to them. These types of seizure actions
have been upheld time and time again by
the Supreme Court. That is how a breeder/owner can be
accused of criminally neglecting or
abusing their dogs because some of them
may need a tooth cleaning or a couple
of puppies have umbilical hernias.
Whatever risk factor is present for any
of these conditions, by the time it gets to
court they will be magnified at a hearing
for return of the animals by the humane
officer or other expert the government
official brings to testify against the
owner.
The humane officer, along with a
zealot AR veterinarian, will equate a
small un-repaired umbilical hernia on
a young dog with beating the dog over
the head with a club. The courts, without
anything in the record before them
to support the owner’s position and
challenge the government’s testimony or
expert opinions, will be forced to rule in
favor of the government.
Animal Rights Legislation
Legalizes Animal Seizure
Dog breeders and owners were
pretty much insulated from this practice
because, by in large, they are law abiding
citizens and remained unaware of this Understanding Due Process May
Save Your Dogs
It is incorrect to think the government
can’t take your property. The Fifth
Amendment often referred to as the
Due Process Clause of the Constitution,
to kids at a party.
While there are some limited defenses
to these seizure actions, it puts the
burden and costs for seeking the return
of property in those cases on the owner.
A lot of people who lost their property
If an owner or their attorney has no prepared legal defense, the court
will end up believing the dog with a little tarter on their teeth is knocking
on deaths door and only a short step away from heart disease.
government were against owners of
shipping companies in England. The
government couldn’t reach across the
ocean to arrest or punish the owners
of the shipping vessels for crimes they
committed, so, in what is sometimes
referred to as a “legal fiction”, the
government would charge the property
with the crime. In those cases involving
the shippers, the government would
seize the ships. As there was some link
between the property and the actual
crime and a hearing was offered, the
seizure was legal. The ships and cargo
would then become the property of the
government as retribution for the crimes
done by their owners.
Many people believe seizure of
animals is unconstitutional. We most
often see this process today in the
seizure of vehicles used to transport
drugs or real estate where illegal drugs
are manufactured or sold. Some clever
law enforcement agencies, looking for
ways to supplement their budgets, have
turned to seizure actions in criminal
cases. The number and types of seizures
of personal property in civil actions
exploded during the nineties and
continue today with few limitations.
The person’s car, boat, airplane or home
would be seized in a civil proceeding.
Sometimes even property not owned
by the person accused of committing
the crime is seized if it was used in the
commission of the crime. Yes, grandma’s
car would be seized by law enforcement
because she loaned it to her grandson not
knowing he would be delivering the pot
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If the owner is not ready to bring evidence of his or her own to that hearing,
the government’s position will be the only facts and opinions before the court
and the presiding judge can only rule on the evidence before him.
conduct by the government in drug
busts or, if they knew about it, didn’t
think it would ever apply to them. That
all changed when laws were enacted
making generally accepted animal
husbandry practices criminal. Most of
these laws were supported and pushed
through the legislative process by the
well funded and very politically active
extreme animal rights pro