Angry animal lovers on Wednesday accused a National Taiwan University student of killing stray cats around the campus, Taipei police said.
Local residents have found numerous dead cats around Wenzhou Street (溫州街), the police said, adding that the bodies showed signs of physical abuse, such as strangling and stabbing.
An instructor at the university, surnamed Wang (王), told police that on Monday she saw a tall man with black gloves holding a stray cat by the neck.
Photo: Tsai Ya-hua, Taipei Times
Police quoted Wang as saying that she was afraid of being assaulted by the man if she tried to stop him, so she went home to telephone for help. When she and a friend returned to the scene they saw the man walk out of the basement of a student dormitory.
Wang said she saw the man get on his scooter, so she took a picture of his license plate with her cellphone, adding that she reported the incident to the police immediately.
Tracking the license plate on Tuesday led the police to a student from Macau, surnamed Chen (陳), who came to Taiwan four years ago to study at the university.
Chen responded to the police request for an interview, saying that he found a stray cat on the street on Tuesday afternoon and was petting it. He only grabbed it by the neck after it scratched him, he said.
Chen said he intended to take the cat to the dormitory basement to “give it a lesson,” but denied accusations of abusing and killing cats, according to the police.
The police forwarded the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for suspected violation of the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法).
Although there was no evidence that Chen abused or killed cats, the police said that there was reason to suspect him after viewing security footage from the area.
Meanwhile, a group of angry animal lovers and Taipei City councilors yesterday asked the city government to re-examine the reporting system for animal abuse, as the police did not act on the suspected case of animal abuse until 26 hours after it was reported, due to jurisdictional confusion.
Officers who received the initial report assumed that animal cruelty cases that do not incur property damage to pet owners — as pets are legally defined as property — should be referred to the Taipei City Animal Protection Office.
However, according to an order promulgated by the National Police Agency in 2012, the police should accept and handle animal cruelty cases in coordination with animal protection authorities, but officers dealing with the suspected cat killing did not understand the order and did not accept the case until the Daan Precinct deputy director told them to do so.
Taipei City Councilor Chien Shu-pei (簡舒培) yesterday called a press conference, where she accused the police of negligence and mishandling the case. Chien demanded that the police reinforce inter-agency communication with the Animal Protection Office to streamline the response to reports of animal cruelty.
Wang and another witness, surnamed Huang (黃), said that police officers initially refused to accept their report and asked if the cat belonged to them or if it was dead, saying that otherwise the case should be referred to the Animal Protection Office.
“Must a cat’s corpse be shown so the police would accept the case? If the witnesses could find the body, they would not have needed the police,” Chien said, adding that officers should be better trained to know their duty.
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