DOC: Some interesting new laws in Indiana. Starting Monday, using a drone to interfere with law enforcement, harass someone, or peep inside of a home is now a class A misdemeanor on Monday. It's punishable up to a year in jail and a 5,000-dollar fine.
This is one of the few areas where I make exceptions and say, we need some new laws and some adjustments or tweaks to old laws. Technology. Budgets change every year, so you need to get together for the budget as a legislature. But new technologies, well, we never foresaw drones. Now these things are becoming a problem. So how do we fit those into current law?
KAL: Yeah, so technology that's advancing and changing, it definitely needs something.
DOC: As of Monday in Indiana, anyone who uses force to rescue a pet from a locked vehicle, is immune from criminal penalties. For example, if you go up to the car and it's really hot and you see the dog suffering and you break the window, no criminal charges for breaking the car window of the car you don't own, provided you have called the cops and you remain at the scene while the cops are getting there. So you call the cops. Go, come quick.
Fido is in the back of the car, and it's really hot. And they go, we're on our way. And you stand there. You break the glass. You cannot be criminally charged. However, you are still liable for half cost of any damage of the vehicle.
KAL: I'm okay with that one.
DOC: Just half of it? Okay.
KAL: If you're someone who is -- I guess it comes down to what is suffering or not. If somebody leaves their pet in the vehicle that could die or be harmed.
DOC: What about these stories where somebody says, I thought it was suffering pet, and it was a stuffed animal. I thought it was a baby, and it was a doll.
KAL: Oh, yeah.
DOC: So now they're only responsible for half the window? And it's my car. Do I have to pay the other half, my insurance? Sorry. It should include, if you get it wrong, you pay the whole damn thing, plus my time and effort to go down there and get it fixed. I don't even want to have to make the call. And I don't want to be without a car, none of that stuff. But they didn't include that.
KAL: That's for next year.
DOC: That's it. Well, we need to leave something for next year.
KAL: 751.
DOC: Protection orders in Indiana on Monday can be issued by a judge. And they can now include an explicit prohibition against harming a family pet. These are protection owners for, like, domestic disputes. Taking custody of a pet away from the abuser with police assistance. And this is a new trend. New laws to protect pets.
In fact, one of the ones that they're continuing to push. And you're going to see this have a big spread in the next year or so. They're going to push this idea of domestic abuse against pets.
So, you know, you go home.
KAL: Isn't there any animal rights protection abuse?
DOC: There are animal laws in some areas and they vary. But what they'll do is put this under the umbrella of domestic.
See, domestic disputes are different. Cops can press charges, even if a spouse says they don't want to in many areas.
So if you punch me and the cop goes, all right, Doc, you punched her. I can say, I don't. It's Kal. He was just drunked up. I get it. No harm. No foul. I'm good. And they don't have to press charges.
If a spouse does that, the officers have the right to press charges. Because so often, people were afraid and they said, no, no, no. We're going to go ahead and push this thing through.
They want that to include pets too. Because they want people to conflate human lives with pets. You may love your pets, but they're different. So this is going to expand in the future where you see domestic disputes can include, well, he slapped the dog or whatever. And you're going to be locked up for that stuff.
