Furious that his girlfriend had broken up with him and stopped taking his calls, Steven Butcher decided to take his anger out on the couple's small puppy.
"Every time you . . . don't pick up the phone, I am beating the dog," Butcher said in an angry voice-mail message he left for his ex-girlfriend. In a later message, as the dog yelped and cried in the background, he said: "You got some more of the dog getting beat."
When police officers arrived at Butcher's Reseda home, they found Nelia, the pit bull puppy, shivering in a sink with cold water running over her. The animal's jaw had been broken, her eye sockets had been fractured and several of her ribs had been cracked.
Butcher, 23, was charged and convicted last year of animal cruelty -- one of a growing number of serious animal abuse cases in Los Angeles, where police and prosecutors say they are taking crimes against animals more seriously than ever.
The Los Angeles Police Department has devoted five officers and detectives to a task force dedicated to investigating animal abuse and neglect. The county district attorney's office recently began training a select group of prosecutors to handle animal-related cases and is seeking tougher sentences for repeat offenders.
Los Angeles has become a national model for its stepped-up enforcement of animal cruelty laws, animal welfare experts said.
The efforts by L.A. authorities and others throughout the country have been propelled by a growing public disgust for such abuse and mounting evidence of a link between animal cruelty and other types of crime.
"As a society, we're just less tolerant of unnecessary and unjustified cruelty to animals," said Dale Bartlett, deputy manager of the animal cruelty and fighting campaign at the Humane Society of the United States.
In Los Angeles County, records show that during the 12 months that ended in August, the district attorney's office filed animal cruelty charges in 116 cases, nearly 50% more than in the previous year.
Last year, prosecutors won a rare dogfighting trial against a 42-year-old nurse, who was sentenced to three years in prison. And in a separate case, the first person they had ever charged with a felony for cockfighting was convicted.
Randall Lockwood, an expert on animal abuse and a senior vice president at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said Los Angeles had adopted one of "the more progressive approaches" in the nation in dealing with crimes against animals.
