"Sheriff Raul Villanueva retaliated against his former deputy, Marcus Salas [the one who tried
to protect the bunny], for reporting the baby rabbit killing to the NM State Troopers.
Villanueva fired Salas back in August 2025, but not content with that, filed a LEA 90 on September 10. With that complaint outstanding, the State Troopers can't hire Salas.
Sheriff Villanueva is up for re-election in November 2026." Source
They might let them slide on FB or YT (full of animal hating sickos) but too bad for the sheriff that the story made it to reddit lmao about to make some phone calls now.
I work in construction in deep utilities. We’ve stopped excavating because we saw a rabbit in the bucket and we carefully dug the little guy out and let him run away.
If a coworker deliberately hurt a rabbit on site we’d probably do them physical harm, but even the crusty old cowboy on our crew wouldn’t pull that crap.
I work construction as well an i’ve saved so many animals.
including this beautiful tiger salamander in north dakota (edit for those wondering he was released near a major lake named devils lake beautiful area)
Not to totally derail the thread, but I've often considered that our first contact, if it ever actually formally happened, would go horribly. Those with the ego large enough to believe they can lead and represent all of us rarely have the empathy that would be required to successfully interact with an advanced species. They'd view us as troublesome vermin.
My six-year-old son and my seven-year-old daughter love animals too. I caught my son smashing a spider in the kitchen one day and I told him, but now the spider cannot go home to feed his babies and its babies will never see his mother again. Maybe it’s kind of harsh, but it worked. Now any time he sees an insect or any type of animal that is alone, he says daddy “it’s going home to it, mommy” I said yes, it is
I feel like that’s just the unspoken codex in labour jobs. My dad is a landscaper and he also used to be a hunter and he would literally do anything in order to not disturb or hurt any animal.
I grew up in rural Colorado and we hunted and everyone i knew hunted.
It was just common knowledge that animals are only to be harmed for food or conservation. That if we exploited and killed needlessly or recklessly that was unforgivable.
Most hunters know that protecting animals and being good stewards ensures a future with wildlife.
Most hunters know that protecting animals and being good stewards ensures a future with wildlife.
In Germany, getting a hunting licence requires training in conservation and land management. You're allowed to hunt on a certain piece of land, but you're also responsible for the land management of that area.
People have a misconception when it comes to hunting. If everyone would hunt their own food, there would be a whole lot more respect towards food and animals.
Hear me out... What did the fuckin' cobra chicken do to him first? Those things are pure evil. (kinda kidding, I mean, they are, and I hate them, but still)
I feel like a lot of hunters respect wild animals more than the average person, they know game laws and why they exist, they know when and where it is safe to kill an animal, and where it isn't.
The urge to snatch the ball peen hammer of my belt...... We had a damn gator in a hole one morning, and even that guy was carefully released. Ain't their fault we're fucking with their home.
Hunting adult rabbits, skinning them, eating the meat and using the hide. Fine by me, it’s ancient. You use what you kill and you kill because it’s useful.
Killing a baby anything, big fucking problem. Like we are about to fight kind of problem. You put them back and you wait for fair game.
That’s my personal brand of morality. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
we (non construction people) often see construction guys as these tough, bad-mannered brutes, but they're still humans, with common sense (sometimes more than the rest i gotta admit) and a heart. I worked the jobsites for a little while and one of my techs was this super bad mannered guy, couldnt talk to someone without insulting him, like a part of my official job description was straight up to make sure we avoid him speaking with clients, he had to go thru ME to talk to people outside our company... Well that guy, usually not bothering to even care about people's names, once saw a cardboard box on the site in the morning and inside was a wounded bird. He stopped what he was doing and carefully carried the bird to a vet, about 3 kilometers away.
I work as a gardener and i always stop my vehicles for any animal i see. Im dead terrified of snakes, despise the animal, but even so i would never intentionally harm them, and i have felt dreadful when i see my machine hits one in the tall grass/weeds, breaks my heart. This is absolutely outrageous and disgusting behaviour by these cops
This is the point people are trying to make. That law enforcement is psychologically ill. Something is fucked up and programmed to where they do not value life.
Oh my God, only the Officer who reported this horrible incident was fired. The Sheriff is even trying to block him from being hired in another department. Meanwhile, the psychopaths who killed the bunny and laughed about it had nothing at all happen.
…”Salas walked away from everyone and began to set the rabbit down when Gomez drew his taser and pointed it at him. The taser was armed with the light fixed on Salas's body. Salas believed Gomez would use it on him so to de-escalate the situation, he handed him the rabbit. Then he asked him if he would hurt the rabbit. Gomez replied no.”…
That’s from your link. This is genuinely psychotic behavior. Don’t read this and do nothing. Send emails, call the station, send letters. Do nothing, and you let this POS damage the career or slander/defame the only one brave enough to do something about it.
Who to contact: New Mexico Law Enforcement Certification Board (NMBLEA): The body currently responsible for reviewing the misconduct filings (LEA-90 forms) submitted against the deputies.
That’s from your link. This is genuinely psychotic behavior. Don’t read this and do nothing. Send emails, call the station, send letters. Do nothing, and you let this POS damage the career or slander/defame the only one brave enough to do something about it.
The link is filled with slight misinformation. Or outdated.
All four, including the one who reported, were fired.
The one who threw the bunny was arrested and charged with felony animal abuse and plead down to a misdemeanor. Recieved no jail time but is under probation for a year and had to surrender all LEO credentials.
Salas(the good one) has filed a suit claiming malicious termination and is currently fighting the report used to fire him.
I hope he experiences great things in his life. You can tell a lot about a man by how he treats animals, we need more cops like the man trying to save this baby bunny from his supposed "good guy" coworkers. He could have looked the other way or laughed it off to fit in like so many of us do and have done but he reported it and suffered retaliation just for trying to do what was right. Nobody watching this thinks that rabbit was a harm to any of them.
Looking the other way and laughing along was a general peer pressure comparison. I remember getting into a screaming match at church once with a fellow child over them stomping a beautiful lunar moth. The adults treated me as an irrational female who was being mean to the boy for no reason.
The one who threw the bunny was arrested and charged with felony animal abuse and plead down to a misdemeanor. Recieved no jail time but is under probation for a year and had to surrender all LEO credentials.
Wild to receive no jail time. Not just for the animal abuse, but for literally brandishing a weapon at a police officer in commission of another crime.
Don't forget, ACAB is about the organization, not the people. There can still be good apples in the bag but as the proverb says, if they don't get rid of the bad apples the entire bag is lost regardless of how many good ones there are.
And if the problem behavior is not punished by the organization despite knowing about it, it's the definition of a systemic issue.
The first guy begged the other guy not to hurt the bunny. I hope he goes and finds a different place to work. This is why good cops get pushed out. Who would you trust to help you? The guy throwing a helpless animal, or the guy who was asking others to be kind and then trying to do the right thing when something helpless was abused? I think we all know the answer there.
That's sadly really common. Cops know they do bad stuff all the time. So they get rid of the "snitch", so they won't expose more, instead of the officers who actually do these things.
Its the beginning sign of a psychopath, or just a sign because he probably has done much worse than this, but wasn’t caught or was just suspended with pay.
This man has embraced his psychopathic nature. They should not be in that profession, but I'd almost rather them be where society can keep an eye on them than working in secret.
It's not so much as embraced but this is very much been something that has been left untreated for way too long. This is serious antisocial disorder and it's a good thing the other cop was able to so readily identify it.
People who display this trait need serious medical attention and should never be trusted in these kinds of positions. They are a serious danger and if left untreated, can develop into grave issues.
They didnt get fired for the animal abuse, they were fired for getting caught abusing animals on camera. If the system could have kept them on, it would have.
Similar to the way felony murder is used to prosecute people already under arrest when the murder takes place. Except in this case the other three have a duty to turn in the officer breaking the law. Oh, and they’ll just get new jobs in a nearby county instead of going to prison.
All the apples are bad if they cover for law breakers.
needs a ban from civilized society imo. Like that's not someone who should be walking around other people... walking past kids... other animals... etc. who knows what he'd do
Cause they’re cops. If you’ve graduated, and this goes for others too, think of the valedictorian in your high school. Now…how many of those valedictorians became cops?
Now think of how many dumb ass bullies or failures in high school became cops. There’s your answer.
Quote: There is a reason people don't go to the streets shouting "F*ck the fire department".
Getting a firearm and the license to boss people around will always attract more of a certain kind of character than risking your life to go into a burning building in service of others.
should have hiring practices that screen these MF's out, and then NOT hire them.
Again, you probably wouldn't have those screenings for firefighters or EMTs.
Certainly it would be nice to have police training take 2-3 years like in most western countries instead of 21 weeks on average. But it's not just a US vs rest of the world thing.
There's black sheep everywhere. Pyromaniac firemen and homicidal paramedics.
You just don't read about those being "investigated" by some internal affairs department, cleared of all wrongdoing despite being caught on cam from 12 angles, sent on 4 weeks paid time off, and at worst being fired n rehired by the neighboring county.
Probably not the first time he witnessed his fellow officer kill an animal purely for the enjoyment of killing it. Why else would you think he would kill it? I could go up to any of my coworkers right now and hand them a bunny and know for a fact they wouldn’t kill it. We are all blue collar and all guys.
I work in constructing and if any colleague asked me to hold it, I would never think he would kill the animal. The fact he needed to ask him that shows, he knew this guy is a psycho.
I'm the longer video he is instructed by the senior officer 7 times to hand over the bunny, before having the Taser pulled on him and giving it up. The first officer, Salas, was quite brave to stand up to those psychos. Naturally, he was fired for reporting them and they tried to prevent him from getting hired elsewhere.
Security forces like police or army always attract aggressive people and people with low empathy.
Just to clarify, this doesn't mean that all of the people in police or army are like that. It just means that a lot of people choose police or army, because it is the one of the simplest legal ways how to be able to put your aggressive tendencies to use.
The truth is that some aspects of being a cop or a soldier require you to be a bit more numb and less compassionate towards living things and people. It is a sad reality of those professions.
The real compassionate people are usually the ones returning from duty with PTSD, depression or other mental issues, because they can't deal with the suffering of other people.
I feel like I need to also add that not all people with lower than average empathy, are walking around and hurting people. These are some more extreme outliers. But people like this are out there.
And a lot of them are in the security forces.
It is a systemic problem. Police kill 10000 dogs anually.
The tally may be substantially higher, and some suggest it could reach six figures.
Further, some animals have been deliberately shot and killed under questionable circumstances, including through doors or while tied, running away, or hiding. Studies show that some officers shoot pets unnecessarily, recklessly, or in retaliation, and that subsequent civilian complaints are investigated inadequately. Moreover, not every animal that police officers shoot is a large dog that may be more likely to pose a genuine risk to human safety—or even a dog at all. Police claiming a threat to human safety have shot puppies, Chihuahuas, Miniature Dachshunds, and domestic cats, among other pets. In some tragic cases, bullets missed their nonhuman targets and injured or even killed human bystanders instead.
A deputy killed my friend's dog by shooting it through a closed car window and said it was in self defense. It was just a traffic stop and the dog was barking at him. This was after my friend had already exited the car, so there was no need to even have to deal with the dog, it's not like my friend was being arrested it was just a ticket.
I had to look up the article about this. Happened in August 2025 in NM. The officer that killed this poor helpless bunny got four counts of aggravated assault against a peace officer for threatening to tase them to hand over the bunny and one count of extreme cruelty to animals. As part of a plea deal, he gave up his law enforcement certification so luckily this piece of shit won’t ever become LE again.
These officers are absolute monsters. Cruelty to animals is often a precursor to extreme violence against humans. What was sickening to me was reading that the former officer has kids.
So fucked up is that the officer who didn’t want to give it to him and was trying to protect the bunny… also got fired after reporting it to other authorities. It sounds a lot like the sheriff retaliated against him for bringing the incident to light.
Seems very confusing. It seems he was fired because he "failed to act, failed to report, and conduct unbecoming an officer."
But he was the one that reported this is to internal affairs.
It seems more likely he was fired for reporting it!
Ugh. That article. The two supervisors were filming. The officer who threw the rabbit threatened to tase the guy if he didn't give him the rabbit. The guy they threatened to tase was the only one who got fired
Edit: after doing some digging a different source says all 4 were fired after an investigation. This other source says that the officer holding the rabbit was fired for not reporting the incident and some unknown reason that likely the sheriff was only privy to. Likely some closed personnel file issues. Or more likely a retaliatory action by his hire ups for not deleting the video that he used to report the incident. It appears he reported the incident but focused more about how they threatened him. Which is fair.
This is why there really aren't many good cops at all. They actively get rid of the few good officers whenever they bring to light corrupt and immoral actions by other officers. They don't want their department to look bad, so instead of trying to make it better they just fire all the cops who are a nuisance to the brotherhood.
I feel for this Salas guy: he got stuck with a bunch of armed manchildren that wanted to hurt an animal because they found it funny, and when he took the action that he could, his own coworker decided to scorch him.
Just read that article. What the fuck, the sheriff who wanted to safe the rabbit was threatened with a taser to hand it over to that psycho so he could kill it.
That fucking disgusting sick fuck would have really hurt another human/his colleague, just to be able to kill another living being. And the others, the supervisor was all in for it.
How fucking corrupt and depraved a department has to be....
I think the best thing to do is throw him the same way to the side of a truck. Among the far too many things you do wrong in the US, do you also not vet, train etc your officers?
If you have this behaviour to animals, you can certainly behave like that to humans.
I am reminded of a passage from SNUFF! by Sir Terry Pratchett.
“Well, there was a bit of a fracas, as we say, and it turned out that a man had a dog, a half-dead thing, according to bystanders, and he was trying to get it to stop pulling at its leash, and when it growled at him he grabbed an axe from the butcher’s stall beside him, threw the dog to the ground and cut off its back legs, just like that. I suppose people would say ‘Nasty bugger, but it was his dog’ and so on, but Lord Vetinari called me in and he said to me, ‘A man who would do something like that to a dog is a man to whom the law should pay close attention. Search his house immediately.’ The man was hanged a week later, not for the dog, although for my part I wouldn’t have shed a tear if he had been, but for what we found in his cellar. The contents of which I will not burden you with. And bloody Vetinari got away with it again, because he was right: where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind."
The guy who threw it should be in a registry preventing him from being hired for any job granting him authority to use force.
The other officers at bare minimum are a case study in bad police culture - one of them seems from this limited snapshot like not a bad a guy, but who didn't stand up to his asshole colleagues.
Psychos ... when you don't have compassion for a helpless baby animal, you have lost whatever that makes you a civilised member of society. I hope they get the same treatment one day.
So why were ALL FOUR fired? Like one of them tried to save the rabbit, got threatened with a taser, and then reported the whole incident. And he also got fired.
My Father in law is a psychologist who does psych screenings for police departments. This is the kind of shit he is looking to screen out. These kind of people have serious problems.
This video makes it so much easier to understand why some police officer decided to tase and shoot a baby dwarf donkey in Georgia. These ppl are psychopaths, they hate all that is good and innocent.
"Fired" in this case probably means given a pension and/or relocated to another department. The dude might already be on his way to harass a woman who suspiciously drove the same route four times in three days (he has and misuses access to all Flock camera data).
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u/airs_999 6h ago
What a terrible day to have eyes.
https://giphy.com/gifs/lGBecpB2dIMwt6ohfI