The Toulouse Court of Appeal creates an animal abuse center
In order to better judge cases of animal abuse, the Toulouse Court of Appeal has created a specialized division. The initiative is motivated by the associative world.
It’s a first. The Toulouse Court of Appeal has set up an environment and animal abuse division. “It is a social issue on which the public prosecutor must act firmly. The pole will allow to allow the follow-up of the procedures, to intervene more quickly and pronounce appropriate sentences”, explains with the AFP Franck Rastoul, Attorney General at the Toulouse Court of Appeal. It is he who is at the origin of this initiative in place since September 1st.
The courts will have at their disposal “short circuits and simplified procedures for the least serious cases” to sanction abuses. And when the facts justify it, “it is necessary to be able to confiscate the animal”, “to strike its owner with a prohibition of detention”.
For example, an owner was given a ten-month suspended prison sentence and a ban on keeping an animal for a year. The day before, about fifty dogs living in deplorable conditions were taken from him.
A welcome animal abuse center in Toulouse
The Attorney General directs public action and drives criminal policy within his jurisdiction, under the authority of the Minister of Justice. The Toulouse Court of Appeal covers Haute-Garonne, Tarn, Ariège and Tarn-et-Garonne. Or, several cases of violence have moved the population, like this dead dog muzzled and tied to a fence in the middle of a heat wave. Its owners wanted to get rid of it.
“We are delighted with this initiative, a fortiori because it comes from the magistrates themselves. This is all the more to be welcomed as the 30 Million Friends Foundation is too often confronted with classifications without follow-up in files of documented animal abuse”, indicates Reha Hutin, its president, in an article on the foundation’s website. “So we can only welcome this realization. It remains to be hoped that other jurisdictions will follow this example”.