Tuesday 14th April 2009
A former pig farmer was arrested and held by police for more than six hours after a police officer who lived next door complained about an ornamental swine statuette in his garden. Robin Demczak, 57, insists the black and white spotted porcelain pig was in residence in his back garden long before traffic officer PC John Ablett moved in next door.
But police reportedly told Mr Demczak, who now works as a window fitter, that the statuette and a sign saying "no pigs" could be considered as harassment. He was arrested at his home in Witney, Oxfordshire, earlier this month and held for six and a half hours following a complaint.
The arrest reportedly followed an 18-month dispute between the two neighbours over a footpath that splits their back gardens.
Mr Demczak said: "PC Ablett had me arrested because he didn't like me keeping my 12-inch porcelain model pig in the back garden. He seems to think it is offensive to policemen."
He insisted he had painted the sign to reassure passersby that there were no pigs kept in a shed in his back garden he previously used as a pig sty. He explained: "When I got rid of all the pigs, I painted a sign saying there weren't any left in there. That was in case someone was worried about them."
A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: "We can confirm that a man was arrested on suspicion of harassment in relation to the incident. He has been released without charge. But the investigation is still ongoing. There was an ornament in the garden and also some writing on a wall." PC Ablett was unavailable for comment.
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Animal rights activists arrested in protest at Harborplace store
February 06, 1994|By Liz Atwood,Sun Staff Writer
Five animal rights' advocates, two dressed in pink pig suits, were arrested at Harborplace's Light Street pavilion yesterday, protesting against a store they say contributes to the cruel deaths of wild animals in the Hawaiian rain forest.
Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals shouted slogans, distributed literature and handcuffed themselves to the doors of the Nature Company, which sells science and environmental materials.
They were protesting the store's support of the Nature %o Conservancy, an environmental group that the protesters contend uses wire snares to trap wild pigs on its rain forest lands in Hawaii.
PETA says the pigs and other animals caught in the snares die slow, agonizing deaths.
The Nature Company and the Nature Conservancy say the pigs, which were brought by settlers to the islands and became wild, are destroying the rain forest and must be eliminated.
"At the heart of this is a split in environmental groups between the eco-system managers and the animal rights advocates," said George Cruys, a spokesman for the Nature Company in Berkeley, Calif.
The Nature Company has raised about $1 million for the Nature Conservancy in the past five years. None of the money goes directly to the Hawaiian preserve, however, Mr. Cruys said.
"It's not a method we like," Alan Holt, director of the Nature Conservancy's stewardship programs in Hawaii, said of the traps. The Conservancy lays snares in about 4,000 of its 20,000 acres of rain forest, he said. It has tried hunting the pigs and fencing the land, but he said snaring is needed.
PETA has been demonstrating at Nature Company stores for about a year.
Yesterday, Baltimore police arrested Mike Markarian, 19; Jennifer Boffinger, 25; Connie Schaeffer, 28; and Joel Zink, 19, all of Washington, D.C.; and Peter Wood, 32, of Silver Spring. All were taken to Central District station and charged with trespassing.
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Published on Sunday, August 12, 2000 by the Associated Press
PETA Activist Drops Manure at DNC Hotel
by Anthony Breznican
LOS ANGELES –– An activist dressed in a pink pig costume dumped four tons of animal manure from a truck Saturday in front of a hotel housing guests attending the Democratic National Convention.
Police arrested the animal rights activist and impounded the truck.
At the Wilshire Grand Hotel, about 10 people from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood on the sidewalk as the activist dumped the manure in the hotel driveway. Some wore the same full-body pig costumes and carried placards that read, "Meat is murder."
City workers and hotel employees cleaned up the 5-foot by 10-foot spill with shovels and trashcans.
In February, the group performed a similar stunt outside a restaurant where Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush had just eaten breakfast.
Photo by M. Spencer Green (AP)
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The nomination of the boar hog Pigasus for President of the United States by the Yippies had been the most "transcendentally lucid" political act of the twentieth century.
Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, the Golden Apple & Leviathan; Pigasus was nominated at the Democratic Party Convention on August 23, 1968
We want to give you a chance to talk to our candidate and to restate our demand that Pigasus be given Secret Service protection and be brought to the White House for his foreign policy briefing.
Jerry Rubin at the nomination of Pigasus for president of the USA
They nominate a president and he eats the people. We nominate a president and the people eat him.
Pigasus nominators' slogan
Everybody's smoking and no one's getting high
Everybody's flying and never touch the sky
There's a UFO over New York and I ain't too surprised
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed – most peculiar, mama
1968 USA: During the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, at the Civic Center plaza (now known as the Daley Center), Yippie leaders Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and others nominated their presidential contender – Pigasus the pig. His platform was 'garbage'. Seven Yippies – and Pigasus – were arrested.
On the same day, almost 6,000 National Guardsman were mobilized and practised riot-control drills. Special police platoons did the same.
"Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, along with David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale were arrested for conspiring to incite violence and crossing state lines with the intent to riot. The group became known as the Chicago Eight until Seale was removed from the proceedings and sentenced to four years in prison for contempt, the group was then known as the Chicago Seven. After a protracted trial and appeals, all charges were dismissed."
