Andrea Rosebrock 
Yvette Tapia, who was videotaped by a neighbor in July as she kicked, dragged, yanked and tossed her newly adopted little dog, Buddy, had been charged with one misdemeanor count of animal cruelty. Now she got a plea bargain and a slap on the wrist. Unbelievable! Caught on tape abusing a little puppy and she gets probation!
Tapia was sentenced to one year of supervised probation, will have to do 100 hours of community service, has to pay $640 in restitution to a rescue group that has been caring for Buddy and cannot own an animal while she is on probation. Oh, and the community service is to be at the Valencia County Animal Shelter.
Now that’s just great! This woman who has shown a propensity for abusing animals will work around them. Who is supposed to be being punished, her or the poor animals at the shelter? Whose to say that she won’t take out her anger and frustration on some innocent and defenseless animal there? I mean, would you let someone who was convicted of child abuse work in a daycare center?
After the videotape came to light, Tapia was laid off from her nice cushy job as a secretary in Albuquerque City Hall. After they investigated the incident, I guess they just looked at the tape, she was fired from her job.
I don’t really understand why the State of NM even offered her a plea bargain considering the evidence they had on tape and just based on that, they could have done much better when it comes to sentencing. Guess I’m not really surprised, this is pretty much the way most animal abuse cases go.
At least her dogs have been removed and are doing fine and away from this piece of trash they will have a chance to be adopted by a family who will really love them.
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Another ridiculous so called “punishment”..And if it makes any sense to forbid her from owning an animal for a year, but allow her to work around many at the shelter during her community service…I’m missing it….Hopefully the shelter worker’s will watch this known animal abuser very closely….The wrist slap lives on…
Isn’t that outright stupid. A man caught molesting young children is sent to a day care to do community serice. I mean, essentially, this correlation is correct. Our community service people are not allowed to handle the dogs, and they are there for DWI. Violent cases are not sent to the shelter. They prob. end up working on the highways. Maybe, the shelter people won’t let her near the animals anyway. There are a lot of nasty jobs at the shelter, like washing, scrubbing, and squigeeing the kennels ( including poo scooping ), cleaning the supply shed, general upkeep of the facility. We don’t get into a buddy-buddy relationship with the community service people. Their ordered around, and quite frankly are treated like pariahs. So, let’s hope the shelter people over there will tough on her although the judge seemed to miss the irony of it all.
This just doesn’t get the message accross that it is NOT okay to abuse an animal in any way. I have read alot of sad animal stories coming out of New Mexico, I think they need to tuffen up their laws and start punishing these animal abusers and killers more severly. I am glad she lost her job, she deserves to loose alot more than that. I hope they will not give her the opportunity to get another animal after her probation. There is clearly something wrong with this woman as seen on the video tape. I also hope they keep an eagle eye on her as she works in the shelter. I, too, fear for the other animals sheltered there.
@Kerry, @Ted Teodoro, @Nancy A Pierce – No matter that I see it almost every day, it still never ceases to amaze me that our judicial system refuses to see the potential and full ramifications of animal abuse and abusers. People who will abuse these innocent and defenseless creatures will think nothing of abusing others, especially when they see that they can basically ‘get away with it.’
And to punish someone by putting them in an environment where they will be around other innocents is just asinine! Workers will not be able to watch this woman all the time and who can say what she will do if she has to opportunity? And people who do this should be treated like pariahs or worse!
It just makes me so angry… to put it mildly!
Her sentence is outrageously stupid I agree. But I am also looking beyond it. She lost (got FIRED) from her cushy municipal job and all the good bennies – and she’ll probably never find another one close to it. She’s suffering public humiliation (GOOD). A year of supervised probation will certainly show up on a BACKGROUND CHECK. And I hope the shelter management makes her work to H-E-Double-Thoothpicks.
Karma’s a bitch there, Yvette. Once that video made it up onto the internet, its there FOREVER.
I STILL SAY THEY SHOULD HAVE TO PAY AN ANIMAL SHELTER A FINE OF $500.00 A MONTH FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIFE.
Some of these judges are barking. Same happens here in New Zealand. We had a judge in Northland who let a couple off a custodial sentence for dog fighting because after all “Pit Bulls are bred for it”.
Since when is anything ever born for abuse? What sort of message was that to send to the general public?
Small wonder nothing changes when we have the same halfwits inflicting their intellectual dwarfism from the bench unchallenged.
Thank God for people like Deanna who works as hard as she does to get this stuff out there.
Some of these judges need to feel the mood!
Jesus, lord have mercy! Pardon me for using the lord’s name in vain, however I am just as sick and tired as the rest of you are with these damned lenient sentences. I had to stay away from this site for a little while because it was just so painful reading all these crappy sentences, but I’m back with a vengence now. Just because it pains me to read these things, doesn’t mean it just stops. Hello, Vicki (me)! I need to wake up and stick with the program.