Thirteen Wisconsin officials raided a no-kill animal shelter in Kenosha, Wisconsin in order to retrieve and kill a baby deer named Giggles. Ray Schulze, a worker at the Society of St. Francis no-kill shelter told WISN 12, “[There were] nine [Department of Natural Resources] agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth. It was like a SWAT team,” The Washington Times reports.
Thirteen armed men came to confiscate a small deer that had been dropped off at the shelter by a family who was worried she may have been abandoned by her mother. The deer was scheduled to be transferred to a wildlife reserve in Illinois the following day, a fact that Mr. Schulze shared with the officials.
“I was thinking in my mind they were going to take the deer and take it to a wildlife shelter, and here they come carrying the baby deer over their shoulder. She was in a body bag. I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘That’s our policy,’” Schulze told WISN 12.
Department of Natural Resources Supervisor, Jennifer Niemeyer, told the news station that the “law requires DNR agents to euthanize wild animals because of their potential danger.” When asked by WISN 12 if the raid could have been conducted in a less-costly manner by having first made a phone call, Niemeyer likened a 13-man raid of an animal shelter and subsequent senseless killing of a tiny, harmless deer to a large-scale drug bust.
“If a sheriff’s department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don’t call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up,” Niemeyer “intelligently” pointed out.
Shelter president Cindy Schultz plans to sue the Department of Natural Resources. “They went way over the top for a little, tiny, baby deer,” she said.
Alisha is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow her on Twitter @childoftheearth.
