Dog breeders need oversight

Last week’s sentencing in the animal-cruelty case against the manager of a Waimanalo dog-breeding facility was disappointing to all concerned about the harm to living creatures in such "puppy mills."

It failed to send the right signal — that inhumane treatment of animals won’t be tolerated in the lucrative breeders’ business — but it did signal that more needs to be done to improve the oversight of the industry.

Circuit Judge Glenn Kim on Wednesday sentenced the manager, David Lee Becker, to a six-month prison term after he had pleaded no contest to 153 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty.

The counts represented individual dogs that ultimately were seized in February 2010; the Hawaiian Humane Society picked them up from Bradley Hawaiian Puppies on Mahailua Street.

Those dogs were found in poor condition, which was documented by veterinary examination in preparation for the prosecution, said Pamela Burns, the society’s president and chief executive officer.

Aided by an outpouring of voluntary help by the community, the dogs and the 80 puppies that were soon born to them were cared for until all were adopted, she said.

After such an effort, it was distressing that the judge did not use his discretion to at least somewhat harden the sentence. There was a lot of room for that, between what he handed down and what the prosecution had sought: five consecutive one-year jail terms and payment of a $306,000 fine and $370,701 in restitution to the Hawaiian Humane Society for the costs it incurred.

Instead, the society got nothing, despite the precedence of earlier animal-cruelty cases in which restitution was part of the sentence.

Kim said restitution was inappropriate because the society was not a direct victim. But Keoni Vaughn, the society’s director of operations, rightly pointed out that this overlooks the fact that in August 2011 the society became legal owners of the dogs in the seizure.

Further, he said, earlier cases have included a community service duty as part of the penalty, another option that was left on the table in this case.

Keith Kaneshiro, the city’s chief prosecutor, on Thursday gave a full-throated defense of his office’s approach, countering Kim’s assertion that the case should have been prosecuted as a felony. The evidence clearly didn’t support that, Kaneshiro countered.

Apart from the points on prosecution strategy, which are endlessly debatable, Kaneshiro offered a rational path for the way forward. The statutes on the books should be sufficient for the deterrence of animal cruelty, he said, but the breeding of dogs should be better regulated as the industry it is.

Kaneshiro should fulfill his pledge to seek legislation enabling the regulation and periodic inspection of "puppy mills."

Burns cited calculations prepared for the case, based on advertisements for the sale of dogs and other data, enabling an estimate that puppy breeding yields $4.5 million in sales annually on Oahu alone. That is a sizeable industry and, like other businesses, it needs oversight.

The fact that this particular industry deals in living creatures only exacerbates the problem with letting it go unwatched.