Humane agent getting certified

Agents for Animal Charity now have their required training.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- An animal cruelty case in the township that ended with reduced and dismissed charges has raised questions about whether a humane agent had authority to sign warrants, make arrests and file charges.
Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains said he's eager to make sure that any missteps of the past are resolved with the proper certification of Jason Osborne, a humane agent for Animal Charity. That agency acts as the humane agency for the county.
Osborne said he has been with the agency for about a year. In that time, he said, other court cases he was involved in were prosecuted successfully. He estimates he's involved in three or four more cases throughout the county that are pending.
He and Nicole Owen, chief executive officer of Animal Charity, contend that he was deputized by the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department and authorized to file charges. But Gains said it appears to him that Osborne was not properly certified and appointed under Ohio law. The mayors of all municipalities in a county must appoint a humane agent. For areas outside the municipalities, it's the county probate court that appoints them.
Osborne and Mike Snyder, another humane agent recently hired by Animal Charity, now have the required 20 hours of training that the law requires an agent to have. Osborne said they are awaiting the appointment of the Youngstown mayor, and the motion for their appointments is in probate court.
Osborne said that he and Snyder have been taking food and water to animals when they get abuse calls, but they are not taking legal action. Osborne said he stopped taking action since the city of Youngstown indicated in a letter he was not properly certified and should not be doing so.
House full of cats
He said it was that letter that prevented him from acting in the Aug. 31 Douglas Street case, where a house full of cats had been found abandoned, dead and dying. Animal Charity and the Canfield area shelter Angels for Animals eventually went in as citizens to rescue the cats, which is permitted under state statute. Youngstown filed the charges pending in that case, he said.
He also said the Douglas Street case enabled him to become certified. Until then, he said, "we couldn't get a training session." After Douglas Street, he got offers for training and received it through the Cleveland Animal Welfare League, he said.
Austintown case
In the Austintown case, Robert and Maureen Jack of North Edgehill Avenue were each charged with cruelty over an episode Aug. 7. A township police officer reported finding three cats, a kitten and a dog tied up and without food or water in their yard in hot weather. Township police called in Osborne, who signed a warrant, took custody of the animals for Animal Charity, and filed the charges in county court.
The couple's case came up in court last Monday for a pretrial, where Robert Jack pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct, and Maureen Jack's charge was dismissed. The grounds for dismissal was the fact that Osborne had not been certified.
Owen said she did not understand why Osborne's being deputized was not enough, and she praised the humane agent, who is also a part-time police officer in Beaver Township, for being a careful and conscientious investigator.
Osborne said he always consulted with the prosecutor's office before filing charges. He also said it did not make sense to him that he couldn't take legal action as a deputy sheriff in an abuse case, because police officers who aren't humane agents act in such cases all the time.
"Quite frankly, I don't know the answer to that question," Gains said, without his researching it. He went on to say though, that Osborne was acting as a humane agent and not a deputy sheriff and had to follow the statute that pertains to laws governing humane agencies and agents.
What's planned
Osborne and Snyder will meet soon with the prosecutor's office to go over state laws and to see what can be done to quickly ensure their proper appointments, Gains said.
The animals in the Austintown case that survived, two of the cats and the dog, will not be returned to the Jacks, said Owen and Gains. Owen said they are adopted and doing well.
Gains and Osborne said that at least one issue is clear: The situation must be straightened out for animals' sake.
Osborne said he's frustrated because for every question he gets answered in trying to do work for the county, he encounters 10 more.
"It's November," he said. "We've had over 1,000 calls and investigated 550 of them. We're trying to abide by the law. And these animals are still out there suffering."