A Loss of Justice in Waukegan, Illinois

In the last 48 hours a news story has gone viral.  A story of injustice and animal cruelty in Waukegan, Illinois.  I covered the story yesterday when I wrote, When Christmas Puppies bring Jail Time.  If you read the original news story, the comments are 100% against the Waukegan Police and the City of Waukegan with good reason.   The injustice and the animal cruelty that were committed in this situation was not by some whacked out "animal abuser" but instead by the so-called Good Guys.  At Christmas Time.  The Waukegan Police Department and a dog flipping group calling itself a rescue are the bad guys in this story.   Their victims are a family of former Marines, John and Stevie Bass.  They have three children and a bulldog.  Sounds like the typical American dream, right?  During this recent Christmas season, John, Stevie, and their three children joyfully raised a single litter of puppies born from their bulldog.  By the time they were six weeks old, the entire litter was sold all except one puppy.   Now the puppies themselves were still living in the Bass's home with their mommy while their anxious new puppy families waited for them to become old enough to go home.  At the same time, local animal rights extremists were trolling the internet and newspapers looking for dog breeders to destroy.   They found one.  Remember that last single puppy looking for a new home?   The word from the family is that a member of the dog flipping group contacted the Bass family under a fake name to buy the last remaining puppy.  

The next thing they knew they were part of a Waukegan Police Sting Operation, causing massive trauma to their family.  Their children had to witness the cops arresting their dad the day before Christmas.  Over puppies.  Obviously Waukegan has no other crime occurring, right?   So Officer Scrooge Kelly, did you thank John Bass for his service to his country while you were slapping the handcuffs on him for owning an illegal puppy?  

Sting Operation: Wikipedia defines a sting operation as: "In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person committing a crime."

In this sting operation over supposedly illegal puppies the Waukegan police sent an officer to go undercover to attempt to buy a puppy in order to try and force the Bass family into committing a crime. You’d think that with the explosion of heroin problems nationwide that this would be some sort of undercover drug buy. But where did the Waukegan Police find out that the Bass family had puppies for sale? They were told by a member of the "rescue group" that resells animals for profit. The dog flipping group pretended to buy a puppy and the undercover officer took over the fake identity that the dog flipper had pretended to be.  But honestly, is a $25 crime worth the time and trouble of the Waukegan Police Department? Don’t they have any other crimes they could be investigating? You know, real crimes with real victims?

There is another legal term that needs to come into play here. Evidence.

The Waukegan Police Department seized these eight puppies as evidence of a crime. Evidence must be retained for trial, protected from tampering and misconduct, and a chain of custody of the evidence maintained at all times. That is standard criminal law procedure. But the Waukegan Police Department immediately gave away the evidence in this legal case. Just 24 hours after the story went viral and it was revealed that Wags 2 Wishes is not a reputable outfit in good standing, suddenly both Wags 2 Wishes and the Waukegan Police Department deny having custody of the stolen puppies. So who has them? Can you imagine the outcry from the courts if these puppies were instead something actually serious like heroin? Here is Terri Crotty's Facebook post admitting that her dog flipping group has custody of the stolen puppies.   Her group that is in "not good standing" with the State of Illinois. 

Can you imagine if this situation was different and for example:  Officer Scrooge Kelly was testifying in court before a Judge and talking about her seizure of illegal heroin and how she arrested someone for the horrific crime of selling drugs? Can you imagine the Defense Attorney asking her, "So, Officer Kelly, where is that heroin now?" What can she say? "Oh, I gave it away to my friends who run a business reselling stuff like that?" Jaws would be dropping all over the courtroom and Sgt. Scrooge Kelly would find herself in chains mighty quick. But in this case the evidence of a crime are puppies, and yet it's okay for her to give them away? This is a violation of the law! John Bass's lawyer has the right to see the evidence against his client and he has the right to have it examined and dispute the terms of seizure. He also has the right to sue for its return. But the puppies can't be returned because all the powers in this case deny having custody of them.  Apparently due process be damned in Waukegan.  Turns out the condition of the puppies themselves has also been tampered with.  Now that the animal flipping group had custody of them and the puppies changed hands up to four times in as many days, they admitted that at least one puppy now has a respiratory infection.  Great going Waukegan!  Is there anything you can do right?  

Turns out the Bass family situation is not unusual.  I've covered the issue of law enforcement not respecting the constitutional rights of animal owners in the past.   Animal rights extremists provide almost all the training that law enforcement and animal control officers receive.  Law enforcement today receives their training on animals and the law from convicted criminals, con artists, perverts and terrorists from the Animal Liberation Front who are 100% opposed to Americans owning animals.  You can read my previous articles on this subject, here, here, and here. 

Since the public outcry over the weekend, both groups are now doing some major damage control. The Waukegan Neighborhood Policing Program deleted all information about the seized puppies off their Facebook page, so too did the Waukegan Police Animal Control Facebook page.  Though I noticed they are still linked to the notorious outfit run by a convicted criminal dog thief called "Dogs Deserve Better" on their page.  Feel free to click on both links and leave 1 star reviews for both Police Programs.  The Wags 2 Wishes group has scrubbed both their website and their Facebook page of all the comments about the stolen puppies and instead posted a whine that they received "threats" over the situation.  

Wags 2 Wishes is now whining that they are facing "threats." Cry me a river. They took 6 week old puppies, puppies that they had no legal right too, and were offering them for sale to the public and were fundraising for their pocketbooks before the Bass family even had their day in court. Wags 2 Wishes admits to having sold 400 animals since May of 2013 yet they are not a legal charity.  Where are the taxes they paid on their all of their animal sales?  Why hasn't the State of Illinois gone after this group?  

The Wags 2 Wishes website is also scrubbed off their announcement that they had saved these bulldog puppies "from a breeder."  Notice even after all the comments over the weekend, the website still does not acknowledge who they are, and where exactly these donations are going.  You are just giving your money to some anonymous website with pictures of cute dogs on it.  How gullible are Americans anyway?  Why are people giving money to this group?

Their website and literature gives an address in this industrial building.  I don't see any facilities for animals there.  Why would you give money to a group that won't reveal who's behind it or where they are actually located?  Con artists like this are always lecturing people that no one should buy a dog from a dog breeder if you haven't seen where the dogs are raised.  Shouldn't the same standard apply to this dog flipping group?  Where are these animals they are selling being housed?  In this warehouse?  Or where?  

Even better this group that I covered yesterday that is in "not good standing" with the State of Illinois, is fundraising to create yet another sales outlet for their products.  They want you to help them buy banks of cages for animals....  Just were are those banks of cages going to be located?  In that industrial building shown above?  Wags 2 Wishes also has a long list of products they want on Amazon that they are asking the public to donate to them.  If a breeder did something like this, they would be fried to hell and back on social media.  Why is this something to be lauded and applauded when these animal flipping groups do it?  

So far, both the Waukegan Police Department and Wags 2 Wishes have been revealed to be violating the Bass family's rights.   They are now engaged in a massive cover-their-asses move.  When does the Bass family get justice?  And just where are the poor little stolen puppies now?  It's long past time that Americans everywhere stand up to these fake Retail Rescues and support American Dog Breeders.  They are a dying breed.