Group Strives to Tighten Requirements for Officers

As crisply dressed officers bustle in and out of the sprawling Marin Humane Society headquarters, Rick Johnson makes his way through kennels filled with yapping dogs and into the main auditorium where the lectures are given.

It is here, in this cavernous room, where California’s humane officers can choose to go for advanced training in such subjects as peace officer ethics, evidence collection and preservation, crime scene photography and the preparation and execution of search warrants.

It is a place, in effect, where humane officers charged with protecting animals from abuse and neglect learn how to be the sworn peace officers they already are.

There is a spacious library, exhibits depicting the history of humane officers and the animals they safeguard and even a visitors center so the public can learn about these little-known agents of the law.

“We want people to know what we are out there doing: trying to make it a better world for animals,” says Johnson, who is president of the State Humane Assn. of California as well as a top official in the Marin Humane Society. “That ethic underlies everything we do.”

Problem is, attendance at the modern center is not mandatory under the state laws that give humane officers their broad range of powers. Many officers, Johnson laments, never come here or to a similar site in San Diego.

Although humane officers can conduct criminal investigations and even make arrests where animals are concerned, many do not have even the most rudimentary training in law and police procedures.

To be a humane officer is a complicated task; humane laws cross a huge spectrum of criminal and civil codes, and it takes a 343-page book just to explain all the applicable state statutes, not to mention all the laws of the individual counties.

As of Jan. 1, 1995, California’s humane officers will be required to take 20 hours of training in animal care and at least 40 hours of training in state laws at accredited post-secondary institutions.

But Johnson wishes more could be done to regulate humane officers. “Training is imperative if you are to use weapons,” he says.

He says the state association, a private organization that led the effort last year to move the state Legislature to strengthen the requirements, is considering proposing some kind of measure to require monitoring boards in each county. Currently, the presiding judge of the Superior Court in each county is charged with reviewing all applicants for humane officers within their jurisdiction before approving them.

That system is outdated, says Johnson, contending that the judges usually simply rubber-stamp the applications.

Such is the case in Los Angeles County, where officials say they simply send the forms to the state Department of Justice in Sacramento so fingerprints can be checked to see if the applicant has a criminal record.

There is no indication that judges involved conduct any investigation beyond the fingerprint check, nothing to equal the exhaustive background and psychological examinations to which applicants for most police and sheriff’s departments are subjected.

“Their calendars are jampacked,” Johnson says. “Their priorities are elsewhere.”

Eric Sakach, a Sacramento-based investigator with the Humane Society of the United States, also said improvements are needed. But like Johnson, he said most humane officers are well-trained and well-behaved in upholding the laws, and that many other states are also upgrading their requirements.

Although no one keeps statistics on the number of humane officers in the state, Sakach estimated that half of those in California carry firearms.

A slender man with the calm demeanor of a country doctor, Johnson, 46, grimaces when he hears tales of wayward humane officers overstepping the bounds of their authority. Although his group has no control over the officers, it spends a good portion of its budget trying to provide better training for them.

Most problems, Johnson said, occur in large urban areas where police departments are too large to notice a few renegade humane officers running around in their official uniforms. Most places, he said, “really don’t have a problem with these Scud missiles like L.A. does.”

And most humane officers, he says, not only do their job well and diligently, but serve an invaluable function at a time when their counterparts in state and local police departments are too busy with murders and rapes to keep a watchful eye on animals.

Most humane officers, according to Johnson and others, work closely with police rather than on their own, and present evidence of criminal conduct to local prosecutors. Marin Humane Society officers, for instance, work for many small localities on a contract basis. They have a state-of-the-art darkroom to print the photographs they use as evidence, and they usually bring a video camera when going out on calls.

And despite the fact that humane officers aren’t required to go there for training, the Marin County site bustles with activity. Humane officers from around the state come and go, and many return every few years just to brush up their skills, Johnson says.