LA cracks down on animal cruelty

By Jack Leonard
Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Furious that his girlfriend had broken up with him and stopped taking his calls, Steven Butcher decided to take his anger out on the couple's puppy.

"Every time you . . . don't pick up the phone, I am beating the dog," Butcher said in a voice-mail message he left for his former girlfriend. In a later message, as the dog yelped in the background, he said, "You got some more of the dog getting beat."

Read more on how LA is cracking down, not only on the arrest of animal abusers, but now on their prosecution as well...