SPCA investigator can be best friend of dogs, cats and even horses

BY MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
Saturday, February 02, 2013
2/02/13 at 6:56 AM

With the Vietnam War escalating in 1964, Tim Geen and his fellow Marines weren't allowed to carry live ammunition until their unit began taking casualties.

"Can you imagine? They were shooting at us," he said, "and we didn't have bullets."

Geen was reminiscing on the way to south Tulsa, where neighbors reported that a pit bull was starving to death in somebody's backyard.

The owner apparently moved out weeks ago, leaving the house abandoned and the dog tied up with no food, no water and no shelter.

Geen climbed a fence to get a better look. And he could count the dog's ribs.

"Oh, she doesn't look so bad," he said. "I've seen worse."

An investigator for the Tulsa Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Geen looks into more than 60 cases a month, spread across much of northeast Oklahoma.

They range from simple neglect - a dog left outside with no water, for example - to simply horrific.

"The worst I ever saw" - his voice gets a bit louder just talking about it - "was a German shepherd."

The dog had worn the same collar so long that it was embedded in the neck, under the skin.

"They had to euthanize the poor thing," Geen said, "and his head nearly fell off."

The owner of that dog went to jail, Geen was happy to say.

But most often, Geen merely writes a "citation" and, if necessary, follows up a few weeks later with a second citation.

Bright orange and formatted much like a traffic ticket, they look official and sound ominous, demanding an immediate response.

But Geen has no law enforcement authority. And his citations have no more legal weight than a note scratched on the back of an envelope.

You might say it's like having no bullets.

"It's frustrating to me that I can't do more," he said. "It makes me feel a little useless at times."

'Evidence to go on'

A deputy from another county once called Maj. Shannon Clark with the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office to discuss an allegation of animal neglect involving some horses.

"And the horses turned out to be mine," Clark said.

A passerby apparently didn't see any food or water and assumed that Clark wasn't providing any.

In fact, he had bales of hay sitting next to a creek just out of view from the road.

"It goes to show how easy it is to make an accusation when you don't have all the facts," Clark says.

"Animal cruelty can be very subjective. You might think an animal looks thin, but are you a veterinarian?"

That's why the SPCA hired a trained investigator to look into reports of abuse and neglect before calling in local authorities.

Weeding out false reports and "minor" incidents, he forwards roughly one out of 20 cases to law enforcement.

"It's not as many as you would think," he said, "because you have to have so much evidence - photos, witnesses, experts.

"Otherwise, the case isn't going anywhere and you're wasting your time."

Law enforcement agencies face the same challenge.

Tulsa County has two full-time deputies who specialize in animal cruelty investigations, handling roughly 100 cases a year.

But only five to 10 cases a year go to the District Attorney's Office. And many - if not most - never make it to court.

"You and I," said Deputy David Long, "might look at a situation and say, 'Yes, that's animal cruelty.' But what does the law say?"

Oklahoma statutes require food, water and shelter. Beyond that, neglect becomes hard to prove.

And abuse charges are hard to make even when the victim is human, much less an animal that can't testify.

"To take a case to the DA," Long said, "I need a three-inch binder full of witness statements, expert testimony, crime-scene photos - all worked up just like a homicide investigation."

With such a high burden of proof, he said, the SPCA rarely makes a report that can turn into a prosecution.

"The reports just aren't detailed enough," Long said. "We don't have the evidence to go on."

'In-between' cases

That's one argument against letting the SPCA and other animal rescue groups issue official citations.

What if they flood the courts with frivolous or poorly documented accusations?

Nonetheless, some states allow it.

Animal-rescue agents have some measure of legal authority in Kentucky, Nevada, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania and California, according to the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University, which keeps track of animal statutes nationwide.

"I wish Oklahoma would do it," Geen said, noting that he had more than 30 years of law enforcement experience in Texas before coming to Tulsa.

"The last thing I want to do is trouble the court with a bunch of minor cases."

Most often, he would still leave a warning or an unofficial citation - which, binding or not, still gets a response from the pet owner 80 percent of the time.

Then he can explain how to provide better treatment, or perhaps even arrange for a more suitable home.

The worst cases would still be handed over to law enforcement, Geen said, leaving only the "in-between" ones to receive official citations.

"Maybe they're not serious enough to justify a full-blown criminal investigation," he said. "But they're too serious to let people get away with."

Meanwhile, Geen will focus on rescuing the animals, not prosecuting the people who abuse them.

Last year, he rescued three horses, eight cats and 132 dogs.

And last week, before leaving the abandoned house in south Tulsa, he arranged for another animal rescue group to take the starving pit bull.

"Why would anybody have an animal and just leave it to starve to death?" Geen wanted to know. "If I could answer that question, it would make my job a lot easier."

Reports of animal cruelty investigated by the Tulsa SPCA in 2012

	Abuse	Neglect	Abandonment
Jan.	15	20	13
Feb.	16	27	11
March	13	21	4
April	17	25	17
May	24	25	9
June	22	42	14
July	23	42	7
Aug.	12	37	10
Sept.	20	33	8
Oct.	25	32	31
Nov.	16	40	12
Dec.	15	31	10

Original Print Headline: Protecting our animals

Michael Overall 918-581-8383
michael.overall@tulsaworld.com

Associated Images:

Tim Geen, the sole state-licensed animal cruelty investigator for the Tulsa Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, hops onto a privacy fence to check on a dog chained in a backyard as he investigates a complaint of abandonment in Tulsa. Geen could hear the dog barking but needed to see the dog's physical condition and if it had food, water and shelter. MICHAEL WYKE/Tulsa World

A dog chained to a fence without shelter barks at Tim Geen, the sole state-licensed animal cruelty investigator for the Tulsa Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as he investigates a complaint in Tulsa. MICHAEL WYKE/Tulsa World

Before heading out to investigate complaints, Tim Geen checks on a family of Great Pyrenees dogs he rescued earlier in the week, now housed in one of the kennels at the TSPCA office in the Tulsa area. He said, "It's frustrating to me that I can't do more." MICHAEL WYKE/Tulsa World

Tim Geen, Tulsa SPCA's animal cruelty investigator, checks paperwork in his van before knocking on doors as he investigates a complaint about a malnourished dog in Tulsa. Oklahoma statutes require food, water and shelter. Beyond that, neglect or abuse is hard to prove. MICHAEL WYKE/Tulsa World