Animal cruelty investigators working in ‘shocking conditions,’ report says
“It wasn’t until after animal cruelty investigator Sara Munoz drove a kilometre down a dirt road — alone, out of cellphone range — and asked an angry dog owner to put his hatchet down that she found out he was also wanted on murder charges.
Every day across Ontario, inadequate funding is putting animal protection officers like Munoz at significant risk of violence and abuse on the job, and creating dangerous and “frankly shocking” work conditions, a new report has found.
Despite acting as the main enforcers of the province’s animal protection laws, investigators with the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals cover huge swathes of the province alone due to understaffing, do not have access to government intelligence databases, and do not have adequate communications equipment — jeopardizing the safety of the group’s predominantly female workforce, the study warns.”
Difference Makers: Understanding and Improving the OSPCA’s Animal Cruelty Investigation Work focuses on the working conditions of Ontario SPCA agents. Funded by a grant from the Council for Research in the Social Sciences at Brock University and co-authored by Amy Fitzgerald, a professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock and Amy Fitzgerald, a professor in the Department of Sociology was released Monday.