Florida busts suggest low hoarding case count is too good to be true

Sheriff Grady Judd and hoarders Frostproof.

Clockwise: Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, Sharon Cochran, & Lisa Lacharite.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Polk County sheriff Grady Judd busted two hoarding cases in a week. How many more, around the U.S., go ignored?

FROSTPROOF, Florida––Sometimes apparent good news is too good to be true.

A probable case in point is the marked leveling off in animal impoundments from reported hoarding cases at about 10% of the known peak reached in 2016.

First the numbers; then recent case details from Polk County, Florida sheriff Grady Judd, known for doing his job, that suggest the national numbers may be down due to too many animal agencies often not doing their jobs.

(See Impoundments from hoarding cases down 90% in six years––why?)

(Beth Clifton collage)

2022 & 2023 produce near identical stats

U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2022 impounded 1,647 cats and 1,020 dogs in known mass neglect cases for a combined total of 2,667 animals seized, both dead and alive, in 46 total busts.

The busts in 2022 included 24 cases brought against self-professed animal rescuers, plus 22 cases against other individuals caught neglecting large numbers of dogs and cats.

U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2023 impounded 1,695 cats and 1,059 dogs in known mass neglect cases, for a combined total of 2,754 animals seized, both dead and alive, in 61 total busts.

The busts in 2023 included 30 cases brought against self-professed animal rescuers, plus 28 brought against other individuals caught neglecting large numbers of dogs and cats.

The increase of 87 in animals impounded in hoarding cases in 2023 compared to 2022 reflects that six more “rescue hoarders” and six more individual hoarders were raided in 2023.

Lisa Lacharite home.
(Polk County Sheriff’s Office photo)

“Overwhelmed cat lady”

“I want to point out,” Grady Judd opened at a December 22, 2023 media conference, “that Lisa [Lacharite] is not an evil person. She is an overwhelmed cat lady.”

Polk county sheriff’s deputies had just impounded 142 cats, 164 birds including chickens, peacocks, and ducks, and three dogs from elementary school teacher Lisa Lacharite, at a trailer home where Lacharite was also sole caregiver for her 75-year-old mother, whom Judd explained was in poor health.

The case was discovered by a single deputy who responded to a request for a welfare check on the mother.

“When the deputy entered the residence,” explained Judd, “he noticed an overwhelming ammonia odor and observed approximately 50 cats running around the residence, climbing on furniture, and sitting on the kitchen counters. He also observed dried feces on the floors and walls.

Lisa Lacharite home.
(Polk County Sheriff’s Office photo)

Most animals impounded in one case in two years

“Lisa admitted she knew the conditions inside the residence were not good for them or for the animals,” Judd continued.

“She stated that she has been overwhelmed by the amount of animals she has, and that it has become too much for her to handle. She agreed to surrender all of the animals, except for her three dogs and her mother’s three cats.”

Evil person or not, Lacharite was arrested on five counts of felony animal cruelty, 304 counts of animal neglect, and one count of elder neglect.

The 304 animals impounded in the Lacharite case were the most seized in any one case in the U.S. in at least two years.

Sharon Cochran’s home.
(Polk County Sheriff’s Office photo)

Similar case a week later

Only one week later Grady Judd again addressed a media conference, to explain that, “On 28, 2023, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office responded to a home on Pope Lane off of Bethlehem Road in unincorporated southwest Polk County,” 29 miles from Frostproof, “regarding a well-being check of an elderly woman,” an almost identical situation.

“When deputies arrived on-scene,” Grady Judd said, “they detected a strong odor of ammonia around and inside the home, and once inside, observed feces throughout the house and over 30 cats inside. Piles of trash and garbage were located throughout the residence, and several cats appeared to be underweight and in need of proper care.

“Detectives and animal control representatives removed one dog and 35 cats from within the house,” Grady Judd continued. “Cat feces and roaches were in every room of the residence. There were no litter boxes found. The air conditioning was non-operational, preventing a sufficient supply of air from circulating in the house. Sharon Cochran, 57, was taken into custody and charged with 36 counts of animal neglect.

(Polk County Sheriff’s Office)

The fire last time

“Cochran is the sole caregiver of an 82-year-old woman with limited mobility,” Grady Judd explained. “Cochran was also charged with one count neglect of an elderly person. The victim was relocated to family members.

“This is the second case in a week where we have found a woman who, thinking she is helping, ended up hoarding animals,” Grady Judd concluded. “The victim is now in the care of other family members, and the animals are being examined by our animal control veterinary staff. It is our hope they will be rehabilitated and able to be adopted out to loving homes.”

Cochran in 2008 “spilled gasoline on herself while carrying a can of the accelerant on her head from her car to the garage,” reported Shoshana Walter of the Lakeland Ledger.

“Then she went outside and lit a cigarette, setting herself on fire,” suffering “burns over about twenty percent of her body.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

The numbers do not suggest improvement

There are 3,143 counties in the U.S.

That two such animal hoarding cases surfaced within a single month in a single county suggests that many more cases could be found if animal and human service agencies made as much effort to discover and respond to them as was made in the 1996-2016 time frame, when the numbers of animals impounded and arrests for neglect of animals rose almost annually.

Humane organizations may be patting themselves on the back for the much lower hoarding caseload coming to light now, crediting improved public awareness and perhaps more effective interventions, but demographic factors suggest those factors might be offset by growing numbers of older people living alone, or with older relatives.

Animal hoarding is also often associated with alcohol or other substance abuse. U.S. Bureau of the Census data indicates that the number of alcohol and illegal drug abusers in the U.S. was about 20 million in 2016 and 19.7 million in 2023, hardly any difference at all.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Markedly increased turnaways

Certainly mass neglect cases are still often coming to light, if with less frequency than they once did. ANIMALS 24-7 noted many such cases during 2023; see Groundhog Day hoarding cases showed need for Feline Fix by Five, Happy ending for chimp, horror for hoarding victims, & a trove of bones, and Mississippi rescue “saves” 54 dogs; 60 starve & thirst to death in cages.

What has changed since 2016 is that many more taxpayer-funded, purportedly “open admission” animal shelters are turning away animals.

Only one instance of a taxpayer-funded, purportedly “open admission” animal shelter came to the notice of ANIMALS 24-7 in 2016; 114 did in 2023.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Why shelters turn away animals

About half of the “open admission” shelters turning away animals in 2023 admitted to being too full, but under pressure to go “no-kill,” refused to kill some animals to make space available for others.

Most of the rest closed “temporarily,” but in some cases for months, due to disease outbreaks in the shelters that typically result from the combination of overcrowding with facilities inadequate for practicing isolation-and-quarantine of incoming sick animals.

Achieving the 90% “live release” rate that qualifies a shelter as “no kill” by the definitions promulgated by the Best Friends Animal Society and Maddie’s Fund is not a realistic goal for any “open admission” shelter, in view of the always high percentage of dangerous dogs that will be among animal control impounds.

Maintaining a 90% release rate is an even more unrealistic goal for shelters lacking isolation-and-quarantine caging able to accommodate several days’ worth of intake.

“Pit hags” as they see themselves and are seen by others. (Beth Clifton collage)

“Crazy cat ladies” & “pit hags”

When shelters refuse to accommodate owner-surrendered animals, the outcome is inevitably more abandonments, more cruel do-it-yourself animal killing by means such as shooting, drowning, and poisoning, and––perhaps most of all––more animals being dumped on “crazy cat ladies,” “pit hags,” and “rescue scammers” who pretend to be operating no-kill shelters as a pretext for soliciting donations.

(Again, see Mississippi rescue “saves” 54 dogs; 60 starve & thirst to death in cages. See also Pit hags, rescue angels, crazy cat ladies, dog men & chicken fighters: what’s in a name?)

Hesitation about responding to animal hoarding cases can come from an agency’s space and budget limitations, reluctance to euthanize, and especially from the certainty that a sudden rush of impounds from a hoarding bust will bring diseased animals into a shelter, likely to infect many of the healthy animals who are already there.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Are we back to 2000-2009, or just not seeing?

In 2016, U.S. animal shelters and “rescues,” usually with nonprofit status and social media pages, collapsed at the rate of more than one a week––a record pace, up sharply from the 2015 shelter or “rescue” failure rate of about one every 10 days.

This was already a substantial increase from the shelter and “rescue” failure rate during the 2000-2009 time frame of about one every two weeks, about the same as in 2022-2023, and more than ten times the failure rate of the two decades 1980-1999, according to the ANIMALS 24-7 log of mass neglect cases.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Much as ANIMALS 24-7 would like to believe that the 2023 hoarding case count confirmed the appearance of dramatic progress found in 2022, the December 2023 Polk County busts appear to confirm our suspicion that hundreds and perhaps thousands of hoarding cases are merely going undetected and unreported.