ATLANTA — Thousands of animal advocates are coming together over the weekend to keep dogs and cats in Georgia safe.
And one of the many issues they will be tackling is the connection between animal cruelty and other crimes. Experts around the state are trying to stop it before it starts.
"These cases need to be taken seriously," Victoria Stilwell said. "Every single case needs to be taken seriously. If there are children in the home, you cannot ignore that."
Stilwell travels the world caring for animals and she wants to see people in Georgia take note.
"We can show people that we're leaders and that we're taking this very, very seriously," she said.
Her investigations have uncovered dozens of more serious crimes that started out as an animal abuse complaint. Gwinnett Senior Animal Welfare investigator Joey Brooks sees the same thing.
"There's usually something there going on," he said. "It's a red flag when I'm looking at this stuff."
He's seen dog fighting rings lead to discoveries of human trafficking and animal abuse lead to child pornography.
"Dogfighting, drugs as well, child pornography, - a lot of domestic violence and child cruelty," Brooks said.
We asked Atlanta Police for their statistics and they said that, out of the last 50 people arrested for animal cruelty, 39 had prior arrests for other crimes.
"We need everybody from animal control to the shelters to police officers to sheriff's departments to work together and follow up on cases and make sure that we get these cases prosecuted," Stilwell said.
Stilwell and Brooks said it's important to talk to young kids about this and raise the alarm earlier that the link between violence against animals and violence against people does exist.
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