An amazing true story — presented as an anthropomorphic graphic novel. “What happens behind the walls of a police station? What kind of living does a cop make? And how does a culture of racism and violence become entrenched? Valentin Gendrot went undercover in Paris to find the answers — revelations that rocked France and led to a series of investigations, including an internal affairs case on Gendrot himself. Flic is an exposé of a world never before seen by outsiders, an urgent story for our times, powerfully illustrated by the talented Thierry Chavant.” And it’s available now from Scribe Publications.

image c. 2024 Scribe Publications

Adam Woolacott of Burnaby, British Columbia, known as O'hare-ah and vivalink in furry fandom, has plead guilty to five of nine charges against him related to sexual offences involving a young teenage girl, after failing to get evidence thrown out over an incorrectly-issued warrant.

Adam - who was then 35 - made contact with the child in December 2019 on a furry Facebook group, and reportedly continued to interact sexually with her through text messages after learning that she was 12. He later met her in a park and touched her breast through clothes, before inviting her to his townhouse where they had sex and he showed her a dragon sex toy.

The girl met Adam in his hotel room at VancouFur 2022, and after further sexual touching sought sex with her again, telling her he had condoms; but she just wanted to hang out. Becoming upset, she left the room and told the event organisers, who contacted police. Adam went missing for a time after the convention, causing friends to request help to find him.

Dorset police are warning of the impact on young children of videos related to Huggy Wuggy, an anthropomorphic antagonist in the independently-developed horror game Poppy Playtime, released last year. The game itself is reminiscent of Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach and has been rated 12 by Common Sense Media. An official plush toy with Velcro paws was released mid-March.

Media featuring the character is proliferating, including a depiction of Huggy's reassembly on TikTok and 'Free Hugs', a multi-verse song from the monster's point of view. Reports indicate that the friendly nature of the character's name seems to be allowing their content to bypass filtering that would usually defend young viewers from such disturbing content, similar to issues before YouTube's COPPA implementation.

NPA 2020 Year in Review: Attacked by Malicious Media. Twitter Account Infested with Costumed Cop Haters. https://t.co/ZG2gyjRCwL pic.twitter.com/zgtfiyZvvU

Furries of past connected mostly via the internet behind avatars and characters of varying species. In chat rooms they would engage in discussion and role play. However, many folks of color found opportunity through being through a world where interaction was through text and art alone. That if they did not discuss or indicate their race then they could see the world in a whole new way. They could finally escape their skin and put on a new one here.

However, no one can live on the internet alone. A systemically racial bias in justice systems throughout America came to a head, once again, in the death of George Floyd, a black citizen of Minneapolis. The cruelty of this death was of grueling note as video was released of Officer Chauvin knelled down on his neck for many minutes until Mr. Floyd stopped breathing.

Normally, a television station reports on the news, not become its top story. The Baltimore Sun and WJZ-TV 13 are reporting that a 25-year-old man from Elkridge, Howard County, Maryland wearing a full-body animal suit (claimed to be a "grey hedgehog onesie" by the station's security guard to WJZ-TV), combat boots and a surgical mask over his face was shot by police at the parking lot of Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned WBFF, Baltimore's Fox 45.

The incident occurred when the suspect first set fire to a car in the parking lot of WBFF with a burning gasoline-soaked rag in the gas tank and afterwards, entered the vestibule of WBFF. When approached by the station's on-duty security guard, he claimed to have information that needed to be shared with the station, and handed over a USB thumb drive containing a rambling manifesto about space and the government, as well as the end of the world, in a video file.

It's something sadly not as commonly seen as other heroic anthropomorphic animal characters, but animator Lightsen's recent project Lizard Cops showcases reptiles as heroes rather than villains.

Recently on Animation Scoop came the announcement of a new feature-length 2-D animation project called Unstable, which is being developed by “the star studded animation team of Jeff ‘Swampy’ Marsh (Phineas & Ferb), David Freedman (Groove High) and top BBC Comedy Producer, Gareth Edwards (Mitchell & Webb). The three have been looking for the right project to collaborate on since they all worked on the adult animated animated series The Mr. Hell Show (BBC2 and Showtime) back in 2000. ” Unstable tells the story of a police horse who is accused of a crime he did not commit (“un-stable”, get it?), and of the little girl whom he turns to for help. One of the producers describes the film as “Witness meets Oceans 11 bumps into Madagascar“. The film is being brought to the screen by Peafur Productions.

image c. 2014 Peafur Productions

Sheriff Callie’s Wild West is a new CGI animated TV series for preschool kids, coming soon to Disney Junior. Starring the voice of Mandy Moore (Tangled), it tells the story of Callie — a calico cat, the loyal and heroic sheriff of a little western town called Nice and Friendly Corners — and her friends and associates as they learn important little life lessons. There’s an article at Entertainment Weekly that includes a preview video of the show. Sheriff Callie’s Wild West is available now at WATCHDisneyJunior.com and the WATCH Disney Junior smartphone and tablet app. It debuts on the Disney Channel and Disney Junior in early 2014.

image c. 2013 Disney Junior

Two fursuits, built by Temperance of Komickrazi Studios, have appeared in a music video for Australian heavy-metal band "DZ Deathrays". The video, for the song "Cops Capacity", depicts two anthropomorphic German Shepherds in police uniforms, abusing their authority.

Calgary-based costumer Temperance was contacted in mid-August and commissioned to build the 'two "Angry looking" German Shepherds who were going to get into lots of trouble'. Despite being given only a week to complete the task, Temperance was excited by the idea of her work appearing in a music video, and filled the order for the partial suits (handpaws, heads and tails), which were sent to the Hayes Brothers Studio in New York City for filming.

The past few days have been very active with animal-related stories from around the world:

• An animal rights activist from Ukraine is protesting poor living conditions for zoo animals, living in the lions' den for five weeks to raise money for them.
• A pair of cougars have been shot after they began attacking humans in Alberta.
• Ukraine's government has vowed to end a sickening local tradition of animal abuse.
• An Idaho man is in hot water after prancing around in a bunny suit.
• A truck carrying bees has flipped and closed a major highway near Edmonton, Alberta.

Swedish newspaper Gotebors-Posten reports that police fired shots at a person wearing a costume, who held up a bank in a large shopping center in the city of Gothenberg late Friday.

A witness told G-P that:

A man in a monkey outfit, or similar, may have been a bear too, came running with security guards behind him. I thought it was a joke at first, a stunt, but then I walked past the bank and saw the shattered glass.

A burning car was discovered by police near the crime scene about an hour after the robbery. Investigations for the unusually-attired suspect are continuing, but he outran the officers at the scene and no arrests have yet been made. [via The Sydney Herald Sun]

Police were called to Kimbrough Middle School in Mesquite, Texas, after a squirrel was seen behaving erratically. The concern was that this can be a sign of rabies.

As a baby squirrel hopped towards a policeman in the grounds of a school, he took out his pepper spray, apparently to defend himself against the potentially infected animal. As school children pleaded with the officer not to harm the creature, the squirrel advanced and the man reacted by spraying it. The squirrel became disorientated and started writhing on the ground.

A Mesquite Animal Control officer was called and cleaned the spray off the squirrel. After being given a satisfactory bill of health, it was released back into the wild.

A video recording of the pepper-spraying incident, made by students, generated outrage after it was posting on YouTube. Having received over 700,000 views in one week, comments on the video are split between those condemning the officer's actions as heavy-handed, and those sympathising with his need to maintain personal safety in the face of a possibly rabid animal.

For the past few weeks, deputies at the Oklahoma Sheriff's Office have found their vehicles being vandalised, with tampering to the electrical wiring.

Closer examination revealed the wiring had been chewed through, with the culprit leaving a mass of tiny footprints in the engine compartment. Deputies have since observed a squirrel dropping down from under one of the vehicles, which showed signs of recent squirrel habitation, and have called in animal control. So far, attempts to trap the vandal squirrel have failed.

In a sign of the times, the Scofflaw Squirrel now has a Twitter account.

Police know drug users, dealers, and traffickers use elaborate methods of protecting and concealing their illegal goods, but this one is a first in Canada: thirteen black bears, found by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at a marijuana plantation in Christina Lake, British Columbia (near the US-Canada border).

The bears were apparently trained to guard two fields of marijuana plants and fed to become docile and trainable, defending the hidden plantation containing over 2300 plants.  The closest past parallel was police finding a two-meter (six-foot) crocodile at a grow-op in 2003.

Read more at WDIV-DT - ClickOnDetroit.com and The Windsor Star.