ohmidog!

Baltimore brothers Travers and Tremayne Johnson have been found not guilty in the burning death of Phoenix, a pit bull doused with accelerant and set on fire in 2009.

Closing arguments were made today and the jury deliberated for less than an hour before pronouncing the brothers not guilty of a crime that led the city to reexamine and strengthen its animal welfare laws and procedures.

Phoenix — the name the dog was given after her rescue — was euthanized days after she was found, on fire, by a Baltimore police officer.

The first trial for the Johnson brothers ended in a hung jury in February 2011.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein issued the following statement after the verdict:

“While I respect the jury’s decision, I am disappointed we didn’t achieve the outcome that we fought for during two challenging trials. Animal cruelty is a serious crime of violence, and those who commit it too frequently commit subsequent crimes of violence against humans. As we demonstrated in this case, we are dedicated to vigorously prosecuting individuals accused of this appalling offense.”

Defense attorneys for the Johnsons focused their defense on whether police mishandled the investigation and some of the evidence.

Craig Beyler, a fire protection engineer, called to the stand as an expert, testified that police mishandled clothing seized from the Johnsons’ South Baltimore home by mixing two pairs of jeans and a pair of sneakers in one bag. The clothing contained traces of an ignitable substance that could not be identified, but Beyler said it could have been a common chemical used in sneakers that might have transferred from the shoes to the jeans.

Prosecutors’ arguments linking the brothers to the burning centered mainly on a police surveillance video recorded from atop a pole near the crime scene.

No DNA, fingerprints or other forensic evidence connected the suspects to the crime.

A police sergeant identified the brothers in the video, in which two young men can be seen walking the dog minutes before the burning, and running away from the scene afterwards. A bystander, Tiera Goodman, told police soon after the incident she too saw the brothers run from the scene.

But Goodman refused to testify in the retrial. A video of her testimony from the first trial was played instead.

(Photo: WBAL)

The North Carolina Highway Patrol officer who was fired in 2007 after being videotaped kicking his drug-sniffing dog has returned to work.

Charles Jones will be a sergeant in the patrol’s special operations unit, reconstructing accidents, Highway Patrol spokesman Jeff Gordon said Monday.

His rehiring is in response to a court order issued in February. A Superior Court judge, the state personnel commission and an administrative law judge all ruled that Jones should get his job back with the Highway Patrol, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

The video of Jones kicking his canine partner, Ricoh, was posted on YouTube, leading then-Gov. Mike Easley to get involved. Jones superiors have testified that the governor’s involvement led them to fire Jones, who they had planned to only discipline.

Jones was filmed kicking Ricoh and suspending him by a leash attached to a railing with his rear paws on the ground. The dog had refused to release a piece of fire hose he had been given as a reward for alerting officers to the presence of drugs, according to court documents.

Jones maintained that he was acting within patrol policy. He appealed the decision to dismiss him and won — a decision most recently upheld by a state appeals court.

A Chincoteague police officer used more force than necessary when he shot a pit bull, the dog’s owner says.

“My question is why did the police officer use a gun and not his Mace, his Taser or his stick, or call animal control,” said Amy McDonald.

McDonald, along with her dog, Bullet, was visiting her father on the Virginia island, when Bullet and his brother ventured off.

Chincoteague Police Chief Eddie Lewis said the dog, a pit bull just over a year old, was running off his leash and had cornered a nearby resident and his son in a barn when police arrived, according to DelmarvaNow.com

The chief said the dog growled at Cpl. Kenneth Reese who “just didn’t have a whole lot of time to react.”

The gunshot hit Bullet in the jaw and chest.

McDonald and her 8-year-old daughter were trying to find the dogs when they heard the shot.

McDonald took Bullet to a Maryland animal hospital. She said the dog’s injuries are expected to take as long as eight weeks to heal. She was issued two tickets for her dogs being unleashed. She said the dogs wouldn’t have hurt the officer. “They’re the biggest sissies you’ve ever seen in your life.”

Lewis said the officer was aware of other dog attacks in recent years, including the mauling of a prominent public official’s granddaughter. In 2009, the six-year-old great granddaughter of Accomack County Supervisor Wanda Thornton was attacked by a dog identified in news reports as a pit bull.

“He’s aware of what damage a pit bull will do if they get ahold of you,” Lewis said of the officer.

Apparently the $40 reward offered for the safe return of a lost Dalmatian-pit bull mix named Papa Bear wasn’t enough for three Akron men.

They called the family, repeatedly, and demanded $500, according to News Channel 5.

Papa Bear got out of his family’s back yard last week. The family posted fliers, with their phone number. Friday night, they started receiving phone calls from a man who demanded $500 and, according to some reports, threatened to kill the dog if the money wasn’t paid.

After repeated calls, over the course of four hours, the family called Akron police.

A team of undercover officers arranged to meet the dognappers at Emerling Park with the cash. When three men approached, officers arrested one man and eventually tracked down the other two.

Papa Bear was found safe and unharmed at the address of one of them.

“He was smiling. He was looking around,” said Shannon Alexander, the dog’s owner. “He jumped into the driver’s side door of the van and got into my daughter’s car seat and rode home in the car seat of the van.

Two of the men were charged with theft, phone harassment and receiving stolen property, police said.

A 22-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy were arrested in Chicago after torturing five puppies and posting videos of it on YouTube, police said.

Joshua Moore, the adult, told police he did it because he was bored, and that he thought “it was not a big deal.”

The videos showed dogs — both the pups and their parents — having duct tape put on their testicles and ripped off, being suspended and spun in a harness, being forced to drink lemon juice and eat their own feces, and being thrown into air, choked and shaken.

The grown dogs were a Chihuahua and a terrier; the pups were mixes of the two, police said.

Moore and the boy were arrested Thursday and charged with animal torture and animal cruelty — all felonies. Moore was ordered held on $150,000 bail today.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the torture came to light when a tipster contacted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA reported the cruelty to the Fort Wayne, Ind., Animal Care and Control officials on Sunday, after learning that Moore was from Chicago but living in Fort Wayne.

On Tuesday, officers in Fort Wayne questioned Moore, who they said admitted he was in the videos. When Moore returned to Chicago Thursday, city police arrested him.

The dogs were seized Thursday from a home in the Austin neighborhood and placed in the care of Chicago’s animal care and cruelty department.

The videos were removed from YouTube before the arrest, but PETA had made copies of them by then.

(Top photo: By John J. Kim / Chicago Sun-Times
Middle photo: Screen grab from videos, courtesy of PETA
Bottom photo: Chicago Police Department)

For the second time in just over a month, Anne Arundel County officials are trying to track down owners of a pit bull found severely injured and abandoned.

A resident brought an injured female pit bull to animal control headquarters last week after she was found on Ritchie Highway near 11th Avenue — less than five miles from where a male pit bull, also injured, was discovered early last month.

Police suspect both were used by dogfighters as as bait dogs.

The female had deep scars and had sustained numerous bites, including a large open wound under her front arm, according to the Baltimore Sun.

She’s being called Princess at Waugh Chapel Animal Hospital, which is treating both her and Rocky Road, the pit bull found injured last month.

Both animals are expected to survive, officers said.

Princess will stay at the animal hospital for treatment and then be released to the SPCA of Anne Arundel County, WUSA reported. Rocky Road is expected to be released to Tara’s House rescue soon, say police.

Police are investigating both cases, and have asked the public to report any suspicious activity, such as “high numbers of dogs, particularly dominant breed dogs, being kept in one location, a high volume of people coming and going from a particular area and injured dogs, who appear to have been involved in a fight.”

The Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for abandoning the Rocky Road and Princess.

“A good shoot” is how police in Pembroke Pines, Florida, are describing the shooting of Baxter, an Australian shepherd officers opened fire on outside his owner’s home.

The 6-year-old Australian Shepherd was shot at least three times Friday night inside the gated Lido Isle neighborhood.

Police went to the house after receiving a call from a citizen who reported the dog was loose in front of the owner’s house.

The dog’s owner, Frank Jones, said Baxter was already back inside the house when police arrived, but the front door was open and the dog ran out.

His son, Cameron Jones, 13, went outside to get Baxter, who was barking at officers. “They said get your dog or we’re gonna shoot him,” the boy told Local 10 News. Two seconds later, according to the boy, they did.

Police officials said the dog bit an officer’s shoe.

Baxter was still alive Saturday (you can see video of him, not looking too ferocious, in this news report). He was being treated at a Cooper City animal clinic.

A Pembroke Pines police spokesman said the shooting was justified: “It was a good shoot,” said Pembroke Pines Police Sgt. Chris Chacon-Chang. “The officer was being attacked.”

Given the conflicting and changing accounts of a dog’s owner and his girlfriend, what killed Raider was a mystery — until police received a note left at the dog’s grave.

The couple had brought the mixed breed dog to an emergency veterinary clinic, where they initially explained Raider had fallen from their second floor balcony. But upon learning the dog was dead, the boyfriend said his girlfriend had thrown the dog off the balcony.

Police in Fishers, Indiana, meanwhile, investigating a complaint they’d received about a dispute at the residence, said they got similar conflicting reports when interviewing the boyfriend.

Detectives talked to neighbors, friends, and the veterinarian that tried to save the dog, but it was a note found later at the dog’s grave that led them to arrest the girlfriend, 28-year-old Sarah E. Rust, on animal cruelty charges last Friday. She was taken to the Hamilton County Jail.

In an interesting twist, police said they received the letter from the dog owner’s ex-girlfriend, and part owner of the dog, who found it at Raider’s grave.

Investigators say the letter was written by Rust:

“Dear Raider, First and foremost forgive me, but also forgive me and your daddy for fighting. We brought your life into our quarrel. You did not deserve to be any part of our combat. I ended your life, for which I am truly sorry my son.”

A protester emulating Mitt Romney’s dog-on-the-car-roof trick — but without a dog — was pulled over by police in Littleton, Colorado.

“Our 911 center received a call from a motorist who saw the car in the photo drive past, and she said the door to the animal carrier was open and a large white dog was in it,” Littleton city spokeswoman Kelli Narde said in an interview, reported on the Huffington Post.

Turns out the rooftop crate contained only a stuffed animal.

The unidentified motorist was re-enacting what the Republican presidential candidate did on a family vacation in 1983, when his crated dog, Seamus, rode on the roof of his car for 12 hours.

Resurgence of that tale led to the formation of a “Dogs Against Romney” protest movement/website.

When police received the call, a dispatcher radioed nearby officers, who spotted the car and pulled it over, finding only a stuffed animal in the cage. Police said the motorist was not cited for having a kennel on his car roof, but did get a ticket for failing to provide proof of insurance.

“We respect anyone’s right to support or oppose anyone’s candidate but when you pull a stunt like that and lead passersby to think there’s a live animal in there, it’s probably taking it too far,” Narde said.

Police didn’t identify the man by name, but Dogs Against Romney confirmed he was a “pack member” known on the Internet as “Oredigger.”

In a blog post Tuesday, Dogs Against Romney said the fact that motorist was pulled over “clearly illustrates how blatantly awful, incredibly dangerous, outrageously insensitive — and even illegal — Mitt Romney’s decision to transport his own dog on the roof of his car was.”

The North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled today that Charles Jones, shown above kicking his State Highway Patrol dog in September 2007, and fired shortly thereafter, should be reinstated.

And with back pay.

Jones was fired after another trooper turned over two 15-second video clips of him suspending his K-9 partner, Ricoh, from a railing and repeatedly kicking him to force him to release a chew toy.

In 2008, the State Personnel Commission found Jones’ punishment too harsh and ordered that he be reinstated.

Tuesday’s ruling is the latest in a series, all of which agreed the Highway Patrol did not have cause to terminate Jones’ employment. (Ricoh didn’t get a vote.) You can find the full text of the ruling here.

Patrol leaders said they initially planned to discipline Jones but decided to fire him when then-Gov. Mike Easley’s office intervened.

In its ruling, the court noted testimony from Jones’ former supervisor, Lt. Col. Cecil Lockley, who said, “They want him gone … the decision regarding Sgt. Jones’ career was predetermined, not by the patrol’s disciplinary process but by an outside entity.”

Lockley called Jones’ method of disciplining Ricoh “ugly,” but said it did not fall outside the realm of patrol-accepted training techniques.

The appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that ”the training method used by Jones on Ricoh in this matter, while appearing excessive and extreme to the general public, is not unreasonably outside of or substantially different from several of the training techniques that are tested, trained and approved for use by the Patrol.”

It concluded, “Jones acted consistently with his training, and used compliance techniques on Ricoh similar to those used by all Patrol members who were canine handlers.”

We’d hope that the highway patrol has redefined the boundaries of its realm of training techniques –  as it stated it would after the case came to public attention.

A rebuilding of the K-9 unit was promised, and an end to the kind of rough training tactics — swinging, suspending and kicking of patrol dogs — that the video depicts. New training procedures, they said, would specifically prohibit punching, kicking, beating and choking of dogs.