Coup de gueule contre la bêtise humaine (again)

 

Vu tout à l'heure sur facebook via Veganism Worlwilde ( page fb ici ) , cette histoire m'a fait un choc quand même:


Cay t'en anglais:

Pour ceux qui lisent pas l'anglais:

Le narrateur raconte qu'il a essayé de porter secours à un faon (ça se passe au Canada), quand un policier se pointe et déclare que l'animal ne s'en sortira pas et qu'il est de son devoir de mettre fin à ses souffrances.
Mais l'animal n'étais pas en si mauvaise condition, ils auraient pu le sauver, l'homme et sa femme ont même trouvé une association qui aurait pu se charger de soigner et de s'occuper de l'animal afin de le réhabiliter par la suite dans son environnement.
Mais par impatience, le policier à tué le faon (ce qu'on voit sur la photo, à savoir aussi que la femme et la fille du mec sont dans la voiture, allez expliquer à une enfant qui a passé les dernières minutes à calmer le faon qu'au final on va le liquider comme ça pour rien? La petite dit même plus tard "Je n'appellerai jamais la police si j'ai un problème, parce qu'ils tuent les animaux")
Une fois l'animal abattu, la famille rentre chez elle accompagnés par la voiture du flic, qui une fois arrivé devant l'allée de l'homme, fait remarquer que les plaques sont expirées depuis la vieille, et au lieu de laisser l'homme la parquer et s'occuper de ça, il déclare qu'il n'a pas confiance et qu'il doit embarquer le véhicule. Petite vengeance non méritée, en somme.
Où comment une famille à été punie pour avoir voulu sauver un faon.


Le témoignage de l'homme:

POLICE THREATEN TO ARREST SAMANTHA, SHOOT BABY FAWN WE WERE TRYING TO SAVE, THEN IMPOUND MY VEHICLE.

This actually happened to me Monday. My little family was left feeling like criminals after we tried to help injured wildlife. Sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/sûreté-du-québec-improve-police-protocol-for-handling-injured-wildlife-citizens-assisting

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I was driving down Route105 near my house in Chelsea when I came around a corner and had to brake to avoid hitting a baby fawn lying on the road, freshly hit. I carried it kicking to the shoulder of the road, and tried to comfort the poor thing. After it calmed down a little it became apparent that the fawn wasn’t going to expire on the spot – it had a couple scratches with no other visible wounds, but it couldn’t use its back legs. It might have had internal injuries, but there was no evidence of that one way or the other.

My 6-year-old daughter Ashiah and Samantha were waiting at home for me with a picnic all laid out, so it was with some reluctance that I asked them to come to the scene of the accident. Samantha has lots more experience with hurt animals than I do, I reasoned.

While the women whose car had struck the deer and I sat with the poor animal, Officer Roy from the local MRC pulled up. We were all on our cellphones with various agencies trying to figure out which one would take a hurt fawn, and the officer politely explained that it was his job to put an end to the deer’s suffering. We started to debate how badly hurt the baby deer was, with the officer stating that it was clearly mortally wounded and all the bystanders arguing that it might just be a broken leg or two. “How can you be sure it’s going to die?” Samantha asked. “Are you a vet?” He admitted he wasn’t, but he was adamant that it was going to die and that he had no choice but to shoot it. I later learned from his personal Facebook page that he is an avid deer hunter, so perhaps that gave him special insight into the deer’s condition, but it certainly wasn’t obvious to the citizens gathered there that day that the deer’s injuries were mortal.

“Let us find someone who can assess its wounds”, we suggested. “I can’t do that”, he said, starting to get visibly irritated. “You need to move aside so I can end its suffering.” Just then, Samantha got through to a local vet who agreed to look at the fawn on the condition that afterwards it would have to be taken by a local sanctuary, specially permitted to rehabilitate deer. But our calls to the sanctuary to find out if it had the space to take the deer only reached voicemail. “We have a vet who will see the deer, and maybe a place to take the deer after”, we said. “Just give us more time to try to get through to the sanctuary.”

Officer Roy wouldn’t have any of it, and at this point he moved over the deer and asked us to back away. Samantha stood over the baby deer and told him he was making the wrong decision. “Even if it’s your job to end it’s suffering”, she said, “you have the discretion to give us some time to try to find someone qualified to help it first. I worked as a civilian with the police for two years, and did plenty of ride-alongs, and I know other cops who wouldn’t rush this.”

Officer Roy disagreed, and then said he was going to have to arrest Samantha. “If you don’t move, you will end up with a criminal record”, he threatened. He repeated the threat several times. They argued like this for a few minutes, getting more and more agitated, and my daughter (who had been petting the fawn in an attempt to calm it) became very frightened and threw her arms around my legs. I asked the officer to calm down, but he wasn’t interested in talking any more. He called in for backup and told Samantha that it was her final warning.

Samantha took Ashiah to the car and drove off crying, so our little girl didn’t have to see the animal die. The officer stood over the fawn, which was no longer panting and was sitting quietly at the edge of the road looking into the woods – maybe for it mother. I took the picture above of Officer Roy shooting the baby deer. I’ve had to put animals out of their misery in the past, too, but I must admit that I couldn’t understand the officer’s haste and inflexibility.

As I passed back by the scene in my pickup a few minutes later, Officer Roy got back into his cruiser and followed me onto the country road we live on and pulled me over. He informed me that he’d observed that the license plate had expired the previous day. “My dad just gave me this truck”, I explained. “I didn’t know that the plates were expired, but I’ll get new ones right away. Just let me park it in my laneway, a few hundred meters down a private road, and I will go to the SAAQ in a different car and sort it out.” The officer instead confiscated the keys and impounded the vehicle. “You don’t have to do this”, I said. “The sticker only expired yesterday!” “Yes, I do”, the officer insisted. “ I can’t trust that you won’t drive this vehicle away as soon as I leave.” My neighbor, who runs one of the region’s largest towing companies, even offered to tow the car to my laneway. But the officer insisted that the pickup must be impounded (where it still sits at the time that I write this).

I couldn’t help but feel that Officer Roy was punishing my little family for standing up to him over the life of a hurt little deer.

Later, we got in touch with the specially permitted wildlife sanctuary we were trying to reach by the road side Monday, and they said they WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE BABY DEER if we'd managed to get through to them. So the fawn didn't necessarily need to die, legally, if the officer involved hadn't been so impatient. Maybe the sanctuary people would have made a qualified assessment that the baby deer wouldn't survive rehabilitation attempts, but now we'll never know.

And based on a conversation we had with local wildlife experts Thursday, we learned that the officer did not have as much right as he said he did to end the deer's life. Wildlife Protection Officers are supposed to be the ones who do this sort of thing, but in bad cases where the animal is clearly not going to live, the police sometimes make a judgement call and euthanize an injured animal to save the wildlife officers the trip. So it wasn't explicitly his job, after all, more of an inter-agency favor.

This is what my daughter told us later that day: “I wouldn’t call the police if I needed help, because they just shoot animals.”

Monday evening, the PR representative for the police contacted us and asked us why we had decided to share the story with the media. When our local paper went to print with an article on the subject, certain details were glossed over and the whole episode was presented as a “bad day for everyone involved.” We couldn’t help but wonder if the police department’s public relations spin team had a hand in the article’s official tone.

What do you think of what went transpired on Monday in our little town? Were we out of line in our efforts to try to save that little fawn’s life? Did Officer Roy act professionally?

I invite you to sign a petition we've created to change the police protocol in Quebec for dealing with such situations. https://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/sûreté-du-québec-improve-police-protocol-for-handling-injured-wildlife-citizens-assisting



*** This just in unofficially from an SPCA representative in Montreal: The Canadian SPCA will check into this. We recommend that gunshot euthanasia in the field is an absolute last resort to be used only when the animal is in clear hopeless condition and in agonal pain and suffering. If that is not the case, we recommend the animal be transported immediately to appropriate medical care for determination of a course of treatment. We will be in touch with that area's police department.

Le texte le dit deux fois en anglais, mais en voilà une troisième en français: l'homme à créé une pétition pour que soit revu le protocole à observer dans de tels cas pour la police canadienne.
Ici:  https://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/sûreté-du-québec-improve-police-protocol-for-handling-injured-wildlife-citizens-assisting

Je ne suis pas canadienne et je n'ai aucun intérêt là-dedans, mais j'ai quand même signé cette pétition, parce que si de là où je suis je peux contribuer à faire évoluer une situation intenable, alors pourquoi je m'en priverais? Et c'est aussi une façon de me dire que si je peux aider d'ici, alors il y a aussi de l'espoir pour que les choses évoluent plus près de chez moi également.
Je ne vais pas vous dire "allez signez signez TU VA LA SIGNER OUI! ", vous faites ce que vous voulez, je m'en fiche, mais je vous mets juste ça là au cas où.