Back on March 27, a black cat wandered onto a broad green field at the Sheriff’s Pistol Range in Kern County. Two deputies, laden in olive-drab tactical gear, spotted the cat, stalked it and shot it. Along with a third deputy who, according to a witness, didn’t draw his gun, the group looked on as the cat writhed in pain and died.
Now, they’re back on the job, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said Sunday. “This case is completed,” he told KGET television news. “The allegations were sustained. The officers have been appropriately disciplined.”
Whatever punitive measures were taken, the sheriff would not say. “That’s as much as I can tell you without violating the peace officer’s bill of rights,” he said.
The deputies were never charged under California Penal Code Section 597, which calls for a prison term of up to three years for “maliciously and intentionally killing an animal.”
The incident probably would have escaped notice had a woman named Susan Bowen not been passing by on her bicycle and watched it happen. She said she saw the deputies stalk and kill the cat, and although she wasn’t able to record the shooting, she did confront the deputies from a distance, taking a video with her phone, shouting, “What are you guys doing to the cat? You just shot it?”
“It was damaging the property,” one deputy responded.
“Damaging the property?” Bowen yelled. “A cat? And now you’re not going to put it out of its misery?”
She posted the video on Facebook.
Bowen could not be reached for comment on the resolution of the matter.
Youngblood also told KGET that he had “met with animal rights groups; they’re content with what we’re doing.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Barbara Hays, who runs the Cat People. As the organization that’s cared for feral cats at Hart Memorial Park, located northeast of Bakersfield and adjacent to the shooting range, it is the animal rights group closest to the situation. Youngblood hasn’t contacted her about the disposition of the case, she said.
The sheriff appeared to take the shooting seriously, Hays said. “He told me, ‘I am as horrified as you are.’”
Although she said that she understood that the Sheriff’s Department is dealing with bigger issues, and that the deputies who used a cat for target practice aren’t representative of the department as a whole, she remains troubled by the shooters: “If they treat a little animal with such disrespect, what in the world are they doing with people?”