October 20, 2006

Mr. Chuck Hartke
Illinois Department of Agriculture
Springfield, IL

Dear Mr. Hartke:

Please consider this to be a formal complaint. Illinois Department of Agriculture spokespeople, in particular, Chris Herbert, have made blatant, apparently-intentional false statements as representatives of the Department. I am putting you on notice so that this dissemination of misinformation will stop.

False Statement 1: No Formal Complaint Filed

The first example of a misstatement is a claim by Department spokespeople according to a September 21 news story on ABC News Channel 20. According to anchor person Elizabeth Wooley:

"The Department of Agriculture says it did not receive any formal complaint from Hindi in reference to the National High School Finals Rodeo event in Springfield."

This is false. I sent E-mails to Dr. Colleen O'Keefe starting at the conclusion of the very first day of the week-long rodeo. Furthermore, many people including myself sent letters and E-mails to the Governor, and I made personal visits to his office. Somehow these apparently did not rise to the level of a "formal complaint." Therefore, on October 10, my associate Janet Enoch and I went to Department headquarters to file a "formal complaint."

We announced ourselves and our intent to the receptionist, who placed a call, ostensibly to someone in the "Formal Complaint Department." We were surprised when a woman who said she was a secretary appeared not with a "Formal Complaint" form, but with a mere notepad. When we restated that we wanted to file a "Formal Complaint," she looked very confused.

The secretary said she would take our information. I asked her if she wanted us to fill out a "Formal Complaint" form, but she said there was no such thing. She said she would just give the information to Dr. Colleen O'Keefe, the very person to whom I had E-mailed numerous complaints.

The bottom line is, Mr. Hartke, that there apparently is no Formal Complaint, Formal Complaint form, nor Formal Complaint procedure. The issue of a Formal Complaint is apparently just a creation by Department spin doctors with precious little concern for telling the truth.

The first time Ms. Herbert came to my attention was when she was quoted in the October 10 edition of the State Journal-Register. In an article titled, "Video reveals rodeo abuse," Ms. Herbert is quoted:

"We've seen the tape. He needs to submit that to the state's attorney's office so they can determine if it's a violation or not."

Ms. Herbert was referring to SHARK's NHSRAF video footage, and she was parroting the erroneous position of you and others in the Department who claimed that SHARK should — for some inexplicable reason — sidestep the investigation process that your own letter of September 11, 2006 to Ms. Karen Moore outlines:

"The Illinois Department of Agriculture is authorized to investigate allegations of abuse under the Illinois Humane Care for Animals Act and local states' attorneys prosecute violations of the Act."

False Statement 2: No violations at the rodeo as Hindi claims

Perhaps we can overlook Ms. Herbert's misinformation in this case since it apparently originated from you. More problematic is Ms. Herbert's statement on September 21 in a news report by Springfield's ABC 20 television, wherein Ms. Herbert states:

"Our inspectors, our investigators were at the rodeo the entire time and we don't believe that there were these violations that Mr. Hindi is alleging."

The violations that SHARK alleges are that animals were spiked and shocked, and that many of the animals that were shocked were not stalling. This included two bulls that were not stalling. The rider of one of those bulls had to be removed from the arena on a stretcher, and transported to the hospital in an ambulance. To us this means that the person who illegally shocked that bull should be held responsible not just for animal abuse, but also for the young man's injuries. So far we have seen little indication that the Department shares our concerns for what happened to that young man.

It is very difficult to understand how Ms. Herbert or anyone else in the Department couldn't believe our allegations. We had given out copies of the abuse to the media, to the Governor's office, to the Illinois State Police, and had posted numerous video clips on the Internet. But Ms. Herbert wasn't done yet.

False Statement 3: Hindi won't hand over evidence

Most problematic of all is a statement by Ms. Herbert in an October 11 story in the State Journal-Register, in which Ms. Herbert is quoted:

"He never provided us with any evidence to do an investigation with. We asked him for a tape quite a long time ago. We need to put it in context. We said, 'Please send us the unedited version.'"

This statement, Mr. Hartke, is absolutely false.

On September 22, 2006, my associate Janet Enoch and I stopped at Department headquarters to drop off a video DVD which included numerous incidents of shocking and spiking of animals at the National High School Rodeo Finals. We spoke to Ms. Jackie Eckert and personally handed her the DVD. This belies Ms. Herbert's claim that, "He never provided us with any evidence to do an investigation with."

Let's look at the rest of Ms. Herbert's statement. On September 25, 2006, subsequent to Ms. Enoch and I dropping off a video DVD, and in response to an E-mail from Ms. Enoch summing up our brief meeting and stating: "Please consider this our official and request for an investigation into this matter."

Ms. Eckert sent the following E-mail message to Ms. Enoch:

"Thank you for the CD. The Sangamon County State's Attorney has requested a copy of all video tapes, still photographs, or other evidence you have that may be relevant to the issues of alleged abuse."

A similarly worded letter addressed to me was sent to SHARK's mailing address. At no time does this communication ask for anything to be sent to the Department. Instead it appears to be a continuation of the misdirection that had been given out by you and others in the Department for a number of weeks.

The communication also does not ask for "the unedited version" of anything. In fact, the inclusion of the word "relevant" would seem to indicate that what was desired, supposedly by the Sangamon County State's Attorney, was edited footage, which was already in your hands.

Furthermore, the claim that, "The Sangamon County State's Attorney has requested a copy of all video tapes, still photographs, or other evidence…" was highly suspect from the beginning. The State's Attorney has publicly stated that he can do nothing with the video footage until the Department has done an investigation. This is consistent with our position on the matter. For that reason we have refused to deliver our evidence directly to the Sangamon County State's Attorney's Office. Given the State's Attorney's public position on this matter, I am left to question if the State's Attorney ever actually made such a request. If the Department still wishes to claim that the State's Attorney made such a request, I would like the identity of the individual(s) in the State's Attorney's office who made this supposed request, that we might get a confirmation of the position, and inquire as to why their position suddenly changed.

It should be mentioned that, of all the rodeo footage we have submitted to the Department over the years, I do not recall ever receiving a request for all of our unedited video and still picture evidence. We don't mind supplying all the evidence, but it has not been done this way before, leading me to believe that this current request is not based on any need to "put it into context," but rather that it is an attempt to conduct public relations damage control by shifting blame to us.

To sum up the matter of Ms. Herbert and other Department spokespeople, I am not only demanding an end to the misinformation, but also that the Department issue a public apology, and I am warning the Department against the dissemination of any more slanderous information.

Moving forward, I would suggest that you and your Department start taking responsibility for what has happened in this controversy and stop trying to pass responsibility and blame off on others. SHARK pushed for a meeting with the Department back in 2005 to resolve any concerns about the rodeo. Our effort was aimed at avoiding cruelty and subsequent controversy. We were held off by the Department until last February. At the February meeting, which did not include either you or Dr. O'Keefe, we detailed our concerns and followed them up with a letter. It took many weeks for a response to come from the Department, and then Ms. Van Dijk's letter was almost completely devoid of substance, although it did include a ringing endorsement of the rodeo.

When it came to the rodeo issue, far more personal attention was to be found in your personal delivery of $55,000 of the taxpayer's money at a rodeo in Wyoming to court the rodeo to come to Illinois, not to mention your time in the announcer's booth at the rodeo whereas you publicly professed your love for the rodeo as the Humane Care for Animals Act was being violated right in front of you. The animals should be so lucky as to receive that level of attention from you or the Department.

When the rodeo began, I sent Dr. O'Keefe E-mails raising concerns over what we were witnessing and documenting. These concerns were ignored. After the rodeo, when we went public with our video and pictures of rodeo abuses, Department spokespeople began a long line of excuses and false claims that continue to this day. Such a pattern of deception and outright lies leave me wondering if anyone in the Department has any sense of honor, integrity or sense of duty. The controversy today exists due to the incompetence and the corruption of the Department of Agriculture. It's time you stop trying to cover up these problems and instead deal with them in a professional and responsible manner.

I expect a response from you by Friday, October 27, 2006 regarding the issues covered in this complaint.

Sincerely,

Steve Hindi
President, SHARK