Police Abuse Even a Threat for Backyard Chickens Now

Why did the chicken cross the road? Perhaps to
get away from psychopathic cops. It seems that
police brutality has even come to the chicken coop these
days.

Last month, the police chief of Atwater, Minnesota, responded to
complaints about a family’s pet chickens by beating and beheading
one of them with a shovel. Outraged Atwater residents gathered this
week to address the situation—by demanding that the tiny rural
community continue to criminalize keeping
chickens and ducks. 

Right now, keeping these animals is a misdemanor offense in
Atwater, according to
Fox Minneapolis-St. Paul. It also seems the brutal
execution of your animals is fair game; Chief Trevor Berger
insisted he killed the chicken out of concerns for public
health. 

At a city council meeting Wednesday, “it was clear that even the
suggestion of changing the ordinance to allow chickens to move in
has a lot residents clucking their tongues,” Fox reports. This
despite the fact that the change city council was considering would
still have required any would-be chicken keepers to get permission
from neighbors, obtain a city permit, and follow an array of other
rules. I guess this is just to remind you that there are actually
people who find keeping chickens and ducks on your own fenced-in,
small-town property—with the permission of neighbors—more
objectionable than cops decapitating a little boy’s chicken with a
shovel.