Tonight my tv show focused on the Reading K-9 Unit and the phenomenol work they do for the citizens of Reading to keep them and the Officers safe. One of the important jobs of the K-9 Officer is to have its partner’s back. The Officers and their K-9 partners live and work together. As a team. They support each other.
Imagine to my horror when I came home and read the following about a former Boston Police Officer who starved his family dog to death. It is unthinkable and unimaginable what a former K-9 Police Officer could do to his own family dog. The dog, Nitro, (pictured here), weighed 25 pounds. He should have weighed at least 75-95 pounds.
Here is the story from MyFoxBoston:
A former MBTA K-9 police officer was sentenced to serve 18 months in jail for felony animal cruelty.
43-year-old Antonio Carneiro of Rochester was also given 20 years of probation during a hearing Tuesday at Wareham District Court.
In Febuarary, 2009 Carneiro was accused of starving his dog, Nitro, a six-year-old Belgian Malinois to death in an outdoor cage at his County Rd. home. The dog weighed only 25 pounds and a necropsy indicated that it may have suffered for months.
Rochester Police chief Paul Magee helped to investigate the case. Magee told FOX 25, “How could a K-9 officer allow this to happen to his animal?”
Carniero was fired by the MBTA in 2009.”
Apparently Carneiro has a history of using the excuse that his dog has “separation anxiety” on different occasions with other dogs of his. The following information was taken from Pet-Abuse.com about Carneiro. After reading the following, my question would have to be- how could this man have ever been allowed to be a K-9 Officer with this his history?
A local man employed as an MBTA Transit Police K9 officer was arrested last week and charged with animal cruelty after a family dog was found dead of starvation at his Rochester home.Antonio Carneiro, 43, of 373 County Road, is charged with one count of animal cruelty in connection with the starvation of Nitro, a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois breed dog, found dead in an isolated outside cage on Carneiro’s property. Carneiro has been employed by the MBTA Transit Police Department for 13 years, the last two of which as a K9 officer. He has been suspended by the MBTA pending an investigationWhen the dog’s emaciated body was found in January 2009, it weighed just 25 pounds. The breed averages about 65 pounds at maturity. An autopsy conducted at Tufts University Veterinary Hospital Pathology Department in Grafton confirmed that the cause of death for Nitro was starvation.”It’s very disheartening, very disheartening,” Rochester Police Chief Paul Magee said. His department was involved with the investigation.Rochester Animal Control Officer Anne Estabrook received a report of a dead dog at Carneiro’s address in January. Because the town animal control officer is under the jurisdiction of the Rochester Police Department, town police also investigated. After viewing the dead dog at Carneiro’s property and removing its body, investigating Rochester Police Officer Donald Kemmett called the Animal Rescue League of Boston’s Law Enforcement Department to have that agency to determine whether to bring a criminal charge against Carneiro.An autopsy was performed on Nitro Jan. 20, and it determined that “the organs all showed signs of starvation, and other than plant material, there was no food in the gastrointestinal tract.” Due to the fact that there were “too many findings of starvation to list,” pathologists turned over the entire autopsy report to law enforcement authorities.Animal Rescue League of Boston police went to Carneiro’s home Feb. 26 and arrested him on one count of animal cruelty.In his report, Animal Rescue League of Boston Law Enforcement Officer Christopher Charbonneau said he asked Carneiro how Nitro ended up dead.”Mr. Carneiro stated that the dog suffered from separation anxiety and wouldn’t eat, and the dog’s weight would go up and down,” Charbonneau wrote in his legal narrative.”I told Mr. Carneiro that it was unlikely that the dog would die from not eating due to separation anxiety. I then asked him where he kept the dog and he stated in the kennel in his rear yard. I then asked if he knew the dog suffered from separation anxiety, why would he isolate the dog in a kennel away from any human interaction, and he did not answer,” Charbonneau wrote.Charbonneau said he also asked Carneiro if he had taken Nitro to a veterinarian. He said he had, but the veterinarian Carneiro said he took the dog to had no record of the visit. The last time Nitro was to a vet was in 2003, when he was just a puppy. Nitro weighed 59 pounds at that time.That same veterinarian has records of lethally injecting two of Carneiro’s other dogs on the same day in 2006. The vet’s records indicate that Carneiro said he wanted the dogs put down “due to separation anxiety, and he was going on vacation and didn’t want to be responsible for the dogs to have anxiety and lose weight while he was on vacation.”
So the animal abuser, a former K-9 Officer only receives 18 months in jail?? Really? Justice has not been served. Only a despicable human being who was a former police officer could starve his own dog to death. How do you live with yourself, Carneiro? You disgust me!
Your opinion?
RIP NITRO
.