(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/16/2023) Circle April 11 on your calendar if you're a pet lover.
A statewide petition drive is scheduled to launch on that date that's designed to prevent those who are convicted of animal abuse from ever adopting or purchasing a pet animal in the future.
A group of pet advocates has rejected the idea of using the Legislature to create a so-called animal abuse state registry for such offenders, which is patterned after the state's already existing sex-offender file.
"Let the people speak to this unreported crime," said Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swasnon, one of the prime movers behind the petition effort. From his law-enforcement platform, he has seen all sorts of animal abuse and, under the current system, there is no way for pet adoption agencies or pet stores to know if one of its clients has a history of mutilating or even killing animals.
Creating the state registry would allow those entities to run names through the system. If there is a positive hit, they would be prevented from selling to the person in question.
The Sheriff also reported that the vast majority of these abusers move on to abuse humans and while the registry itself would not prevent that, he believes creating the system, "would be a deterrent."
His hope is to gather enough petition signatures to put this before the voters in November 2024.