Dognapers Find Police Now on Their Trail

The dognaper was surrounded.

Five uniformed Los Angeles Police Department officers and six detectives were deployed in a perimeter around the Woodland Hills parking lot. For backup, a police helicopter hovered in the distance.

The victim counted out the $450 ransom as the dognaper sat in his car, the stolen Boston terrier in his lap. Suddenly, six police cars pulled up. Officers confronted the dognaper, guns drawn. They arrested him, returned the dog to the shaken owner and headed back to the West Valley division station, where they resumed chasing burglars, rapists and murderers.

With so many other serious crimes today, this dognaping five months ago may not have seemed worthy of such a show of force. But there are so many dogs stolen and so many distraught owners demanding action that law enforcement officials are taking the problem more seriously.

“Extortion is extortion,” said Detective Larry Kagele, who coordinated the dognaping bust. “Stealing a dog and demanding money is no different than any other type of extortion.”

About 2 million dogs are stolen each year in the United States, said Mitch Rapoport, director of the National Dog Registry, which operates a national hot line for stolen pets. Southern California law enforcement agencies, particularly in affluent areas, and other animal control agencies also are receiving an increasing number of dog theft reports. At least once a month, someone reports a dog theft to the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Key reasons that thefts are increasing, Rapoport said, are that the price of pedigreed dogs continues to rise and more people are purchasing expensive guard dogs because of the fear of crime. With so many people buying valuable animals, he said, thieves are finding easy money in suburban back yards.

The owner of the Boston terrier was lucky because police usually cannot spare that many officers for a dognaping bust. But most police stations, like the West Valley Division officers, will try to send a squad car to the site where owners have arranged an exchange with dognapers.

Some owners are so attached to their pets that they will pay exorbitant ransom demands. A widow from Corona del Mar last year left $2,500 in a Huntington Beach phone booth to ensure the return of Ginger, her toy poodle.

Orange County police said dognapings for ransom here are rare or perhaps underreported.

“It’s not to say it doesn’t happen occasionally, but I wouldn’t say it’s a regular occurrence,” said Sgt. Bill Van Cleve of the Huntington Beach Police Department’s investigative unit.

“We have very few reports of dog theft,” Van Cleve said. “As far as evidence goes, it’s doggone if the people don’t have any idea who stole them.”

Demands for ransom are rare in most cases, said Robert O’Brien, animal control officer for the Costa Mesa Police Department.

“There are a lot of reports from people who feel it was theft of a dog, but in fact what happens a lot of times is that people find strays and decide to keep them,” O’Brien said. “It also happens that people find dogs and call the owners and ask how much the reward is.”

In addition to dognaping for ransom, thieves sell the pets on the street or at swap meets. Some unscrupulous animal dealers, Rapoport said, sell stolen pedigreed dogs to puppy mills for breeding purposes. Others sell them for medical research at prices of up to $500. Although dogs are the primary victims, cats, too, are occasionally stolen.

Criminals usually target homes, but they sometimes park large vans in neighborhoods and steal loose dogs they find on the street, said Judith Reitman, author of “Stolen For Profit: How the Medical Establishment Is Funding a National Pet-Theft Conspiracy.” Some, Reitman said, lure dogs with high-pitched whistles, use females in heat as bait or immobilize larger dogs with stun guns and then toss them into vans.

“A lot of people can’t comprehend pet theft,” said Lt. Dave Havard, head of investigations for the Los Angeles SPCA chapter. “They think their dog just got loose somehow and wandered off. People should be aware that pets are being stolen and that it’s a serious crime. If the dog is worth more than $400, that’s grand theft.”

*

The magnitude of the theft problem became clear to many animal experts last year when a sheriff in a rural West Virginia county discovered 110 stolen dogs crowded into a small pen. A man had stolen the pets and was planning to sell them to medical researchers.

A local newspaper published the National Dog Registry’s hot line (1-800-NDR-DOGS) to help reunite owners with their stolen pets. Operators were surprised when the hot line was deluged with calls from more than 1,000 people in the area who had recently lost dogs.

“If that many people from a rural county in West Virginia have missing dogs,” Rapoport said, “you can imagine how big the problem is across the country.”

Most Southern California detectives, overwhelmed with violent crimes, do not have time for such investigations. The most that they usually can do is take a theft report. Even most local animal control agencies cannot spare officers to track down pet thieves.

Police recommend that victims report the crime, then set up a meeting with the thieves to arrange an exchange. If there are no officers free to set up a bust, victims can sometimes jot down a license plate number for a later arrest.

Some pet owners will simply pay ransoms without contacting authorities. Others pay the rewards that they had offered without realizing their pets had been been stolen. Some thieves snatch dogs out of back yards, wait until reward notices are posted and then return the pets to pick up the cash.

Although there are no local statistics on dog thefts, during the last year LAPD officers have made a number of busts:

* Last month, police arrested a man who stole Shannon Ray’s boxer, Willy, from her Woodland Hills home and left a $100 ransom demand on her answering machine.

* In February, police arrested a man who stole a Yorkshire terrier from a Hollywood pet store, then ordered the owner to take a bus to a Sunset Boulevard street corner, where he promised to swap the dog for $240.

* In October, police arrested a woman who stole Virginia Davis’ mixed-breed dog, Gizmo, from her car, which was parked in a Van Nuys shopping center, and demanded a $200 ransom.

The most dramatic dognaping bust in the annals of the LAPD involved Maude, the Boston terrier.

She was abducted in January from the Woodland Hills back yard of Henri and Sandy Kemp. The dognaper called late that night and told the Kemps he was prepared to kill Maude if he did not get at least $450. They agreed to meet at 9 the next morning in the parking lot of a Woodland Hills supermarket.

“We were mortified,” Sandi Kemp said. She lifted Maude on her lap, and said: “We were some worried about you, Maudie.”

They called police early the next day and talked to Detective Kagele, who quickly rounded up officers from the roll call meeting. Later that morning, as Kemp met with the dognaper and began counting out $20s, Kagele barked into his police radio: “OK! Move in!” Officers whipped out their 9-millimeter pistols and liberated Maude, who ran up to Kemp, jumped into his arms and began licking his face.

Kagele is a hero to the Kemps, but the other detectives in the station tease him unmercifully. When he walks into the squad room, some of them begin barking. Others call out: “Here comes the doggie bandit detective.” A few of the detectives bought him a fuzzy, yellow stuffed dog with pink and green paws.

Although some detectives were amused by the bust, the district attorney was not. Damani Grey, 19, pleaded guilty to attempted extortion and was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

When it was all over, Maude was treated no differently from any other Southern California resident who is the victim of a crime. An acquaintance of the Kemps called to inquire if there had been any movie or television executives interested in Maude’s story. If any called, she wanted the Kemps to be sure to contact her.

Her husband is an agent.

*

Some dogs that end up at medical research facilities, animal activists say, are stolen. Others are obtained by deception.

In one of the country’s most notorious cases, three San Fernando Valley kennel operators were convicted of theft, fraud and conspiracy in 1991 and sentenced to three to five years in prison. They answered ads from owners who were seeking new homes for their pets, promising that the animals would be cared for on a horse ranch. Instead, about 80 of the pets died after being sold for medical research.

But, according to Dr. John Young, chief veterinarian at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, animals that are obtained under false pretenses and sold to researchers “are very isolated, unusual cases.” Most dogs, he said, are obtained legally and have enabled researchers to develop important medical advances--including angioplasty, in which a balloon catheter is inserted to widen narrowing arteries.

Some animal advocates have made it so difficult for research facilities to obtain animals that more than 10 million dogs a year are put to death in shelters when they could have been useful to scientists, Young said. But the shortage of dogs for research, he said, has created a climate in which a handful of unscrupulous animal dealers can operate.

Animal dealers, licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, can sell to medical facilities if they breed the animals themselves or if the owners sign statements indicating they are aware their pets will be used for research. But there should be more frequent inspections of dealers’ kennels to ensure dogs are properly cared for, and there should be greater penalties for those who break the law, said Barbara Peterson, program coordinator of the Stolen Pet Program, which operates a nonprofit hot line to reunite owners with pets (1-800-STOLEN-PET).

In response, USDA officials say they have increased such inspections by about 35% during the last two years. And, officials say, the department has added 35 inspectors since 1990.

Still, Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton) and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) recently wrote letters, which were signed by dozens of other congressmen, to the USDA demanding greater oversight, including better investigations before dealers are licensed.

“Every day across America, family pets are stolen to be sold for use in medical research . . . “ Brown wrote. “The law must be enforced so that pets and pet-owners are protected from the actions of those people who profit from this unconscionable trade.”

Animal experts recommend that owners have identification numbers tattooed on their dogs or tiny microchips implanted beneath the skin--both painless procedures that are becoming increasingly common. Back yards should be secured with locked gates and dogs should always be kept on a leash outside the house, they warn.

“People think that just because they have a Doberman or a Rottweiler or a boxer they’re safe because people will be afraid to steal them,” Rapoport said. “But a lot of these people who are stealing dogs are pros. They can handle the animal better than you can.”