Fifteen Scotland Yard Police Officers Work on Croydon Cat Killer File
This must be a world record; fifteen police officers working to catch a man who kills and mutilates domestic cats and other small animals.
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- Image in public domain.
The case has been covered extensively in online media so I won’t recite it except to say a man or men have killed and dissected almost 400 animals in three years starting in Croydon, London, UK. Most of the animals are outside domestic cats. In the UK this is the default situation.
The Metropolitan Police began Operation Takahe in December 2015. It is staffed by four detective constables, a detective sergeant and ten police constables who are not attached to the operation full-time.
Ten post-mortem examinations have been conducted at a cost of £7,500. South Norwood Animal Rescue is working with the police. They advise cat owners to keep their cats inside at night. I expect they understand that it is all but impossible to expect UK cat owners to keep their cats inside all the time and also it seems that the criminal works at night.
Apparently he wears a torch (I presume on his head) or carries it. He is white and in his forties and has brown hair. There is a £10,000 reward to catch him.
All the cats have been killed by blunt force trauma and then cut up with a knife. The presumed intention is to cause maximum distress to cat owners and perhaps to create a trademark version of cat cruelty and killing.
It is nice to see the police taking this seriously. It will please cat owners and animal advocates as often law enforcement let down cat lovers in my experience of writing about cat abuse for more than ten years.
Source: Times Newspaper