To Serve & Protect
Humane Law Enforcement Officers Rescue Suffering Animals and Fight Animal Cruelty, One Case at a Time
By Kyra Kirkwood
When we’re in trouble, we call the police. When dogs are in trouble, who do they turn to? The “animal cops,” of course. These folks in agencies across the nation rescue abused and neglected dogs from harmful situations while bringing their owners to justice. And they keep at it, every day of the year.
One of those animal cops and proud of it is Annemarie Lucas. While she may look like a petite, unassuming girl next door, this “blonde with the ponytail ” from Animal Precinct is all business when it comes to protecting animals. Lucas is a cornerstone of the ASPCA’s Humane Law Enforcement department and for the past 14 years has called the ASPCA in New York home. Currently, she is a supervisory special investigator, but for years, Lucas patrolled the streets of New York in search of animal cruelty cases.
It was during this time that she was featured in Animal Planet’s hit reality series Animal Precinct and became the unofficial face of the show. “I hope this series evokes compassion in people and makes them realize that animals are living creatures who have the ability to feel pain, joy and sadness,” Lucas stated on the ASPCA’s website. “I think that people will definitely see these emotions on the faces of the animals when they watch the show.”
Due to Animal Precinct’s popularity throughout its six-year run, Lucas became well-known in the city and brought home the message to a vast audience that all forms of animal cruelty, from beatings to neglect, are wrong. “I don’t accept it,” she said. “There is no excuse for abusing an animal. It rocks me to my core. It’s so evil.”
But this wasn’t the life Lucas initially envisioned for herself. Growing up in a small town in Connecticut, Lucas experienced an ideal upbringing where animal abuse was unheard of. She thrived in theatrical arts and eventually moved to New York City to pursue her dream of acting.
In between various acting gigs, Lucas volunteered with a shelter in Long Island. Quickly, she realized where her heart rested, and it wasn’t onstage. Lucas had never seen animal abuse before, and when she did, she felt empowered to stop it. Lucas fostered dogs and cats for the shelter, and made it her mission to learn as much as she could about animal welfare. Years went by, and Lucas ran across an article describing the work done by ASPCA’s Humane Law Enforcement team. “[I said] ‘Wow! There are animal police out there! That’s what I’m supposed to be.’” Lucas applied for the job and became the organization’s first female officer in nearly a decade, she said. “It was almost like, ‘I’m home!’”
After spending six months training in the field and 40 more hours of weaponry instruction, Lucas was able to carry a gun, make arrests, issue search warrants and basically conduct her job in much of the way a police officer does. She did not attend a police academy as part of her ASPCA training, Lucas said, because her job is so specialized. But many former police officers often find their way to become animal cops. However, anyone with a love of animals and a drive to do what’s right by them can become a humane law enforcement officer, not just those with police department backgrounds. Look at Lucas — her background was in theater.
“It’s not just rescuing puppies and kittens,” said Lucas. “It’s so much more than that. You’re in law enforcement. There’s a lot of responsibility. You have to know the law. You really are putting your life on the line for an animal, which is fine by me.”
As a special agent, Lucas worked nights and weekends, often by herself, touring areas like the Bronx and other boroughs in New York City. Nothing stopped her drive or ambition to help animals and succeed in her new career. “I wanted to prove I was not some little girl from Connecticut,” she said.
Four years after Lucas began her career, Animal Precinct started filming at ASPCA headquarters, and Lucas had the opportunity to combine her drive to help animals along with her years of theatrical training. The latter made her comfortable in front of the camera and helped her deliver her message against animal cruelty to countless viewers each episode. “You can do something to help an animal,” Lucas said, like volunteering at shelters or calling the police when cruelty is suspected. “Everybody can do something to help.”
Most days, Lucas would hop in her car and follow up on complaints of cruelty called in to her office. “That’s why it is so important for people to pick up the phone if they see an animal suffering. I want to empower people to pick up that phone. No one else can help that animal but maybe you,” she said. “There always is that animal waiting for us to rescue it.”
Lucas worked long hours, took complaint reports, conducted investigations and followed up on prior cases. Her experience enabled her to sniff out true abuse cases from those that were misunderstandings or even misinformed decisions. Sometimes, all it took was some education to help pet owners realize they were being abusive; taking the animal is the last option these animal cops reach. Perhaps owners didn’t understand that dogs needed to have shade, shelter and water available to them at all times. Or perhaps they couldn’t afford proper veterinary care and didn’t know where to turn.
Educating an owner is just as important as making an arrest in some cases, said Lucas. It provides the same goal: Getting a better life for the pet in need. It might just take a bit of information to change the behavior, which was done out of ignorance, not malice. But it’s still not an excuse. “That’s their fault, too, for not doing research,” added Lucas. “It really is your responsibility [to provide everything your pet needs].”
Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, where there are evil people. These cases involving true abuse and neglect always took longer to resolve and investigate. Lucas said she kept her main goal of stopping the suffering forefront in her mind, as well as her intention to garner as much information and proof as possible to insure a criminal conviction of the animal’s owner. “It should never be considered a right to have an animal,” she said. “It should be considered a great honor or privilege.”
These traipses through New York City took Lucas to every living condition imaginable. “Never in my life did I think I’d go into a crack house,” she said with a laugh.
But that she did and more. Nothing stood in the way between a cruelty investigation and Lucas’ drive. It was often extremely difficult, but Lucas powered through each and every case. Even though things have improved emotionally for Lucas, the psychological toll of a job like hers is undeniable. “You get tainted,” she said. “You sort of begin to wonder if it’s ever going to stop.”
It took Lucas nearly an entire year to “settle down” and detach from the emotions she experienced while on the job. Normally emotional and openly passionate, Lucas said she needed to learn how to reign in her feelings while on a case and not let them overwhelm her. “I have to be stronger if I am going to survive,” she said. “If I was crying all the time, I wasn’t helping the animals. Now, I’m like Wonder Woman. I put on my uniform and it’s my costume. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do it. This uniform is my armor. I become strong.” 
Lucas knew the core reason why she faced such ugliness day after day; it was for the animals. She said she needed to remain focused in order to save these creatures and not succumb to her emotions. That meant she couldn’t burst out crying when she saw a burned cat or a dog so weak that he could not stand. That meant she couldn’t punch a man for starving his dog to death or slap a woman for letting her dog stay chained to a tree in freezing weather. But that’s not to say she didn’t think about it. “No one would respect us if we went out and treated people badly,” Lucas said. “Although, don’t get me wrong. I certainly would love to punch someone in the face [at times].”
One case that really upset Lucas involved Sheila, a beautiful German Shepherd literally being eaten alive by a raging tick infestation. Neighbors in Brooklyn called the ASPCA to report a sick dog rotting in a backyard. The dog was so weak from lack of food and approximately 1,000 ticks eating away at her, she could barely stand. When Lucas arrived on scene, it took all her effort to remain calm and professional in front of the dog’s owner, who happened to be a nurse and displayed no emotion about Sheila’s condition. Animal Precinct filmed this case for an episode, and when Lucas walked away from the owner and toward the camera, the dedication, drive and anger flashed in her eyes as she quietly hissed her intentions to see that justice was served.
Lucas held true to her promise by immediately rescuing Sheila, getting her prompt medical care and arresting the owner. In the end, Sheila rebounded, regained her health and was adopted by a loving family. Those happy endings are what Lucas keeps in mind whenever she needs the extra push to soldier on. “They know they’re being rescued,” she said. “They realize they’re safe.”
When encountering difficult people, Lucas reframes the situation, putting it back on them and in terms they can understand. Lucas will say something like, “You sleep in a warm bed every night but your animals are outside without shelter. What makes you think they’re OK with that?” Regardless of how inhumane some pet owners might be, Lucas knows she needs to act, not react, to the situation in order to gather appropriate proof that will guarantee a criminal conviction.
“There’s been this movement that animals do matter,” Lucas said. “[Animal Precinct] really did open up that avenue for people. [A pet] is not a novelty. It’s a family member. It’s not a toy you get tired of playing with after Christmas morning.”
One of her most rewarding cases involved Cherokee, a German Shepherd mix. The dog was found beaten, suffering from broken ribs and broken legs as well as a deep gouge on his nose from having a makeshift muzzle (fashioned from rope) tied tightly around his nose. The reason? So he wouldn’t alert the neighbors with his cries when his owner beat him, said Lucas. In 1999, the owner was convicted of animal cruelty, giving Lucas her first conviction on the job. Cherokee was adopted by a loving family and is living an amazing life. “He’s a happy boy now,” Lucas said.
These days, Lucas lives with her husband and eight dogs, 10 cats and a horse. All are rescues, and five of the cats actually came from a case Lucas herself worked on. She still loves to follow up on some of her cases to see how the happy endings unfolded. One such case involved Lucy, Lucas’ first case involving an arrest and the dog that cemented her belief that she was in the right career. This starving, neglected dog was chained in the backyard with a padlock around her neck. She desperately tried to protect her puppies, even the dead one, despite the lack of food, water and shelter. Eight years later, Lucas visited Lucy, now Ginger, living an amazing life in upstate New York as the pampered, adored family dog.
“That really molded my career,” said Lucas of first seeing Lucy in such squalor. “It solidified why I do what I do. In that moment, I redefined what my job was — to help animals in need.”
Kyra Kirkwood is an Orange County, California-based freelance writer specializing in dog reporting. Visit her website at www.kyrakirkwood.com.
