Why Not Charge Him With Growling, Too?

Grrrr...

La. police arrest growling man on drug charges

Mar 17 2009 07:15PM CST

Authorities arrested a 32-year-old Texas man on drug charges on Thursday after construction workers saw him on his hands and knees, eating mud and growling like a dog. A woman who accompanied the man from Texas told investigators he had been wandering around the complex and eating dog food.

An offcial from a local psychiatric clinic, speaking on condition of not being taken seriously because she knows nothing about the man, the circumstances and the drugs he had taken, nevertheless remarked that "dog-man" constituted a threat to the public, and his hostile, doglike behavior was analagous to being threatend with a gun. She said her husband, who had taken an online course in animal criminalistics about 10 years ago, before being asked to leave the program, ssid he believed the local animal control center could classify the man as a canine and euthanize him without a hearing. But he cautioned the law could have changed in the span of 10 years or he may not have remembered correctly. The woman confirmed the man had a very poor memory due to being dropped on his head from a second story window when he was a toddler. At the time of writing, it remained uncertan whether the man-dog would be arraigned before a magistrate or released to the parish animal control unit for killing.

Sheriff's Lt. Horace Womack said a small bottle of PCP, a half-pound of marijuana and one-fourth ounce of crack cocaine were seized during the man-dog's arrest.

The man was booked with possessing all three drugs with intent to distribute them. He was placed in a cell where jailers at the DeSoto Detention Center could keep an eye on him in case he attempted suicide.

When comtacted for comment, the Director of the Louisiana office of the S.P.C.A said it sounded like another instance of police brutality. "The police try to classify these people as animals in order to by-pass the criminal justice system, and euthanize them," he commented before rushing off to lunch.

Abner Wilcox contributed to this story from DeRidder, La.