The story in the news today is about the conviction for animal cruelty of Glynn Johnson in a Riverside County court, a real slimster, who beat a neighbor's German Shepard puppy, Karley, in 2008 so savagely that the dog had to be euthanized. The defendant is a 55-year old retiree from the L.A. County Fire Dept. who has a history of really weird behavior towards others- a lot of hostility and anger type issues- even towards his own family. Sentencing in pending.
But this crime initially did not look like there was going to be anything done because of the reluctance of law enforcement to act against the defendant neighbor, Glynn Johnson, a retired assistant fire chief in the L.A.County Fire Department. It looked like there was a sort of professional courtesy or outright free pass operating here that was was holding up any serious consideration of prosecution. The public got word of the details of the crime and put pressure on officials not to ignore this case and then continued to follow the case. The public pressure to prosecute was considered crucial to accomplish action by the officials rather than let it go as a reduced charge or even not charged at all.
The felony charge carries a maximum four-year sentence. Meanwhile, this defendant is receiving a pension of $15,000.00 a month according to Jeff O'Toole, the neighbor whose dog was beaten. The pension, by the way, is not affected whether Johnson goes to prison or not.
The story gives more of details of the crime, "Fire Chief Found Guilty of Felony Animal Cruelty Charges Reports Last Chance for Animals (LCA)," January 26, 20010, . http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/fire-chief-found-guilty-of,1138077.shtmlb as it appears online in "Earth Times." You can see it was a seriouis matter by reading about it in this story. Most of the other reports in the news of this story don't cover the details of what Johnson did, apparently considering them not to be important enough.
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