Exclusive from ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:
“Reality TV” & Rescue Ink Unleashed
National Geographic Channel: 10 p.m. Fridays. Debuted September 25, 2009 [print_link]
BY MERRITT CLIFTON
AFTER THE SUCCESS OF Animal Precinct, Rescue Ink Unleashed was inevitable. Since the beginning of television, each successful series theme has been followed by variations, trying to emulate the aspects of the prototype that captured an audience, while adding twists that the producers hope might attract even more viewers. Typically the successful prototype is a gritty realistic drama. After knock-offs exploit that approach to the point of running out of ideas, caricatures follow. Some are forthrightly cartoons: The Flintstones (1960) followed The Honeymooners (1955). Others are merely cartoonish in live-action format: Charlie’s Angels (1976), for instance, was a distant descendant of the cop show format pioneered by Dragnet (1951).
So-called “reality” TV scraps the costs of scripting, choreographing, and hiring professional actors, in favor of editing impromptu footage into something with enough semblance of a plot to hold viewers through the commercials. Yet, despite the pretense of being “real” because it is unrehearsed, “reality” TV tends to closely parallel the conventions of scripted TV, which evolved in the first place because those conventions work.
Early “reality” crime shows, like Animal Precinct, which debuted in 2001, follow actual law enforcement personnel on their actual rounds. After Animal Precinct became a smash hit came virtual copies: Animal Cops Detroit, Animal Cops Houston, Miami Animal Cops, Animal Cops San Francisco, Animal Planet Heroes: Phoenix, Animal Cops South Africa, and Animal Cops Philadelphia.
Then came cartoon time. Much as the private detective genre follows the cop show, with protagonists who have more liberty to violate the constraints of real-life law enforcement, the Rescue Ink rescuers aid animals without having to observe warrant requirements and carefully maintain a chain of custody of evidence. Instead of being neatly outfitted and clean-shaven public servants, the Rescue Ink characters are tattooed bikers, with the muscle-bound bodies of power lifters. Rather than driving mundane animal control vans, they are shown with flamboyantly painted motorcycles and hot rods. At times they use language that animal control officers cannot use on the job.
Mostly, on camera at least, they do things like feed pit bull terriers whose person is hospitalized, drive animals to sanctuaries, take animals to be sterilized, and talk about how they feel about animals. The image they project, however, constantly cultivated by the voice-over narration, is that they are vigilantes on behalf of abused animals, who at any moment might knuckle a bad guy’s head.
Like Animal Precinct, Rescue Ink Unleashed is videotaped in New York City. Knowingly or not, it follows a tradition begun locally by ASPCA founder Henry Bergh. On November 21, 1870, Bergh coordinated a police raid on a dogfight at Kit Burns’ Tavern, the animal fighting venue depicted in the 2002 Martin Scorcese film Gangs of New York. One of the raiders, apparently a Captain Allaire, dropped through a skylight into mid-ring in mid-fight to call an abrupt halt to the proceedings.
Later renditions of the raid, including on the ASPCA web site, mis-attribute the plunge to Bergh himself, who at six feet tall, age 47, probably could not have fit through the skylight and made the hard landing safely enough to confront the dogfighters. Bergh loved to tell the story, though, to impress upon animal abusers and potential donors that if diplomacy failed–and Bergh himself was a former diplomat–any means would be taken to bring perpetrators to justice.
The tradition of the tough guy for the animals has played out through countless variations since, including the quasi-piracy of Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the undercover videography of Steve Hindi and SHARK, the nightrider tactics of various factions operating as the “Animal Liberation Front,” and the feral cat feeding done by the late New York City crime boss Vicente Gigante. Though examples exist everywhere, New York City seems to produce a disproportionate number–at least of those that get high-profile media attention. Of note as a possible antecedent for Rescue Ink Unleashed was The Witness, a 1999 Tribe of Heart video, much aired at animal rights conferences during the next few years, which dramatized the animal rescue work of then-Brooklyn building contractor Eddie Lama, an ex-convict portrayed as a tough guy. Actually a soft-spoken fellow who acknowledged the decades of work of many little known rescuers before him, Lama even at the peak of his transient celebrity tended to stand in the back of the room at conferences and listen attentively to the other speakers. His most confrontational activity appeared to be airing animal rights videos to sidewalk passers-by on a widescreen TV mounted in the back of his van. Lama and partner Eddie Rizzo, also an ex-convict, in 1998 founded the Oasis Sanctuary in Callicoon, New York. Rizzo died in 2004. Donations fell as The Witness was shown less and less. By mid-2009 Lama was trying to find other homes for the remaining animals, and trying to sell the property, after paying $25,000 in back property taxes. “The plan remains to relocate,” Lama told ANIMAL PEOPLE in November 2009, “but unfortunately that can not take place unless we sell some of the property. Our concern is that unpaid property taxes will once again put our place in jeopardy.”
Animal advocates, frustrated by the slow pace of trying to bring abusers to justice through often inadequate laws and a clogged, sometimes indifferent judicial system, tend to like the idea of tough guys for the animals meting out vigilante justice. Yet, while this is the image that Rescue Ink Unleashed plays up, reality is that the show frequently illustrates the limits of the tough-guy approach.The alleged cat-shooter they confront in the early episodes is a scrawny apparent immigrant who stands up to them and calls the police on them. They yell in the man’s face, and offer him non-violent help to keep cats out of his garden, but appear to be no more successful in amending his outlook and his ways than the neighbors who summoned Rescue Ink.
Neither do the men of action accomplish anything extraordinary in two afternoons of trying to help an animal control officer catch four free-roaming chickens. Instead of baiting and netting them all at once, as successful chicken-catchers do every day all over the world, Rescue Ink chases the chickens all over the neighborhood. The chickens are finally caught, but only after the Rescue Ink members demonstrate many ways to stress already frightened animals–albeit animals who soon receive good homes at a sanctuary.
Polling other animal rescue agencies, Patrick Whittle of Long Island Newsday found Rescue Ink praised by Associated Humane Societies of New Jersey chief executive Roseann Trezza and Katie’s Critters Small Animal Rescue founder Wendy Culkin, but criticized by Michelle Curtin of Second Chance Wildlife Rescue and Suffolk County SPCA chief Roy Gross. Rescue Ink members had crashed a Suffolk County SPCA press conference a few days earlier to denounce how the agency had handled a major serial cruelty and neglect case, and argued with Curtin at the scene–in front of local TV news cameras.
"Big Ant" (Anthony) is one of the team's most engaging members.
Regardless of the apparent sincere intent and efforts of the rescuers, Rescue Ink Unleashed is more about television than humane work. But there is also some real-life crime drama behind the TV scenes, exposed on November 14, 2009 by Mark Harrington of Long Island Newsday.
“Robert Misseri, 40, has alternately been described as the executive director, organizer, dispatcher, CEO and principal” of Rescue Ink, Harrington began. Rescue Ink itself is nonprofit, but “two separate entities, Rescue Ink Productions and Rescue Ink Publications, are for-profit enterprises that pay members for participation in the TV show” and a book deal, Harrington explained. “Misseri is managing partner of both companies.”
The book was co-authored by former Newsday reporter and columnist Denise Flaim.
Misseri told Harrington that he has donated at least $12,000 of his money to the nonprofit Rescue Ink entity, said the production company pays expenses for the show, including ‘payments to all participants,'” Harrington added. “In a 2000 indictment against him and 10 others,” Harrington revealed, “Misseri was accused by federal prosecutors of directing the ‘Galasso-Misseri crew’ of the Colombo organized crime family. But as the case neared trial, the charges against him largely disintegrated. According to the indictment, a witness had accused Misseri of being in a car during the 1994 murder of Louis Dorval, an accused mobster. Prosecutors have since charged a Long Island gym owner, Christian Tarantino, who was not among the original 11 defendants, with ordering Dorval killed. Tarantino’s lawyer said he denies it.”
Misseri was also charged with arson. “The arson accusation involved a fire at the Have-A-Home Kennel in Old Brookville,” wrote Harrington, “in which Misseri denied any role. A police report made no mention of him having been in a car of men who confessed to the crime, court papers said.” The murder and arson charges were dropped, but Misseri pleaded guilty to alleged money-laundering in 2002. “In addition to 37 months in prison, Misseri was sentenced to three years supervised release and ordered to pay $109,349 in restitution, court papers say. He was given credit for time served, and he says he served 32 months,” Harrington wrote.
Another Rescue Ink cofounder, Joseph Panzarella, allegedly survived an attempted mob “hit.” According to Harrington, “In court papers filed in the 2008 racketeering and murder trial of convicted mobster Charles Carneglia, Panzarella is described by prosecutors in Brooklyn as a ‘Gambino family associate who was shot in a 1995 mob conflict. Carneglia, according to the papers, sought to avenge the shooting of Panzarella by another accused mobster. The court papers in a footnote describe Panzarella as an ‘unnamed co-conspirator’ in five racketeering acts of the Carneglia case. He has not been charged with any crime.”
In April 2000, when Misseri was jailed for five months awaiting trial, “the North Fork Animal Welfare League recalled [in a letter to the court] how Misseri and his wife happened to be driving by when a dog escaped from its kennel,” Harrington noted. The Misseris helped to slow traffic and recapture the dog.
Thus there is some evidence that Misseri and friends were always tough guys for the animals. But the most serious work done against animal abuse in New York City is still done by the direct successors of Henry Bergh et al, the ASPCA officers featured in Animal Precinct, who have badges, search warrants, and gather evidence that stands up in court.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Merritt Clifton is editor in chief of ANIMAL PEOPLE, the world’s leading independent news and comment publication devoted to animal issues.
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