Finally caught for animal cruelty, Grimsby men to go to jail

I am often shocked at how cruel humans can be and how little punishment they get for their cruelty.

Last Friday, a press release from RSPCA described one of the worst cases of animal cruelty. The story was about three men from Grimsby posing as pest control to gain access to places like golf courses where they tortured defenseless wild animals.

These men, Mark Wesley Smith, Liam Patrick Ardito and Gary Cannon had kept hundreds of images and video recordings of their orchestrated acts of cruelty. Cliff Harrison (RSPCA Investigator in charge of the case) described it as “the most disturbing case I have investigated in my 23 years with the RSPCA.”. Some of the cruelty they did included setting dogs on foxes and badgers whilst laughing and joking as the dogs tore the animals apart. They took wild sparrowhawk chicks from their nests and staged animal fights in a pit. Many terrified wild animals were painfully tortured and killed by these three men. And lets not forget the pain and suffering their dogs were put through when they were forced to attack other animals. A few photos can be seen on the PDF version (you will need a pdf reader to open this).

They were given 16 week jail sentences and lifetime bans on keeping dogs and birds. The sentences seem small in comparison to the amount of pain each individual animal must have experienced in their hands. In my opinion, the punishment was too soft because I honestly believe that cruelty to animals is only a small step away from cruelty to humans. They had shown a complete lack of respect for life and zero compassion to those poor animals and they truly deserve more than a little slap on the wrist.

Sources:

RSPCA. (2013). Grimsby men jailed for sickening campaign against wildlife. Retrieved on 4th March 2013 from http://www.rspca.org.uk/media/pressreleases/details/-/article/PressGrimsbyMenJailedForSickeningCampaignOfWildlifeCrime1Mar13