A Philadelphia police officer was charged with animal cruelty Thursday, four months after investigators believe he put his starving pit bull mix into a trash bag and abandoned her at a park.
Authorities charged Officer Michael Long, 33, with multiple counts of animal cruelty following an investigation by the Pennsylvania SPCA and the police department’s Internal Affairs Unit.
Long, an 11-year veteran of the police department, has been suspended from the force for 30 days with the intent to dismiss, police said in a statement to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Pennsylvania SPCA director of Humane Law Enforcement Nicole Wilson told KYW-TV that the abandoned pit bull was micro-chipped, which led investigators to Long.
Officers with the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ Humane Law Enforcement team found the dog in November after a passer-by spotted her head poking out of a garbage bag in Wissahickon Valley Park. Authorities brought the severely underfed dog to the Pennsylvania SPCA’s shelter.
The dog was found just before Thanksgiving and named Cranberry. Veterinarians estimate she is around 2 years old.
Veterinarians caring for Cranberry were unsure in November whether she would recover from her previous owner’s lack of care, but she survived and was adopted in December, Pennsylvania SPCA officials said.
“She is currently living in a home in Malvern soaking up life as a couch potato very happy and most of her updated pictures come back exhausted by how happy she is,” Wilson told KYW-TV.
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