VELEZ-MITCHELL: Hey Foxy, tonight, a possible breakthrough for animal rights. The Animal Legal Defense Fund is planning on creating a database of convicted animal abusers. Right now anybody can walk into a shelter and adopt an animal, even somebody with a history of abuse. But this registry would prevent past abusers from getting new animals who could become their next victim. This database for example could help dogs like Puppy Doe who was found nearly beaten to death in a Massachusetts park. Straight out to Chris Green from the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Now the guy who allegedly did this was charged with a whole bunch of captive animal cruelty. How would your registry help that person from attacking another animal?</s>CHRIS GREEN, ANIMAL LEGAL DEFENSE FUND: Well, once they are charged and convicted, they then would go on this data bass. And so if they ever try to go into a shelter or even a pet store and try to find another animal, or even to prevent this very situation if they were going on Craigslist, the person getting rid of the animal on Craigslist could type their name and just ask to see their drivers` license, type in their name and birth date and then it would pop up once that database is populated up, it would pop up whether or not they had been convicted of an animal abuse crime.</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: This is an example of how people are taking these issues far more seriously. I mean this is a time of real change for the animal protection movement -- quickly.</s>GREEN: For sure, oh yes. And we see that, too. The way this matters to much of the public is that we have seen such a rapid development in adding penalty convictions for different animal abuse crimes. So I think back about 15 years ago, there were only seven states that treated animal abuse as a felony. Now, there`s only one state that doesn`t. It`s got 49 states so here you see in just a span of 20 years --</s>VELEZ-MITCHELL: Chris, thank you so much. Got to go. Animal Legal Defense Fund -- great organization. Stay right there.
Website Could Prevent Animal Abuse