Officer Alec Eugene Taylor
sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty to animal cruelty.
By John Vibes for The Free
Thought Project
A Maryland police officer will
be spending a year in jail after he pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges in
a Montgomery County courtroom last week.
Earlier this year, 28-year-old,
Baltimore city cop Alec Eugene Taylor became enraged when his girlfriend’s
seven-month-old Jack Russell terrier “Rocko” had an accident on the floor.
Taylor savagely beat the dog
with a mop, and then strangled it until it was no longer breathing. Taylor then heartlessly took photos of the
dead puppy and sent them to his girlfriend like it was no big deal.
According to the Washington
Post, the following text message exchange took place between Taylor and his now
ex-girlfriend, Deborah Avila.
“I almost killed rocko, he took
a wet s*** all over the carpet after I let him outside.” Taylor reportedly
wrote late in the afternoon on Feb. 26.
He then sent a photo of the dog
to Avila, who responded by asking, “Why is he laying like that?”
“I beat him, I might of
paralyzed him,” Taylor replied.
“Is he walking?” Avila asked.
“Nope… I think he’s pretty much
dead. Imma throw him out now,” Taylor responded.
Cruelty to animals is part of
The MacDonald Triad, traits that often are demonstrated in sociopaths from a
young age. It says an individual who is
able to engage in cruelty to animals may have no conscience and no remorse for
their behavior.
Warren Brown, Taylor’s defense
attorney argued in court that work-related stress contributed to the violent
outburst that ended in the dog’s death.
“I think we all have
unfortunately a little dark side in us, and sometimes it comes out, and I think
for a variety of reasons, it showed itself at the moment that he inflicted the
injuries to the dog that led to the dog’s death,” Brown said.
“On a daily basis [he]
patrolled the very deadly streets of Baltimore, this man snapped, and this was
out of character for him,” he added.
Surprisingly, Judge Richard
Jordan was not sympathetic to these arguments and he sentenced Taylor to a year
in prison, exceeding the suggested sentencing guidelines, which was 3 months.
“We do know that you had to
beat him out from his hiding place from behind the washer or the dryer with the
mop, it’s absolutely disgusting what you did,” Jordan said in court last week.
Taylor’s parents have called
the sentence “excessive,” and claim that the only reason that Avila pressed
charges against their son was because their relationship did not work
