A widespread campaign of intimidation and violence by animal rights extremists against University of California (UC) scientists and researchers has been marked by numerous acts of harassment, vandalism and a series of firebombings and attempted firebombings deliberately targeting individuals.
Two firebombings targeting UC - Santa Cruz (UCSC) scientists are the latest attacks related to the campaign, which began in 2006 and has primarily focused on UC faculty who use animal experimentation in their research.
On August 2, 2008, a firebomb – described by authorities as a "Molotov cocktail on steroids" – was lit on the porch of a UCSC molecular biologist, causing a fire and a large amount of smoke to spread throughout the home. The victim and his family, who had been sleeping inside, managed to escape down a fire ladder.
The biologist was one of 13 UCSC faculty members identified on a pamphlet found at a Santa Cruz coffee shop several days before the incident. The pamphlet provided photos and home addresses of the individuals listed, along with a warning, "Animal abusers everywhere beware; we know where you live; we know where you work; we will never back down until you end your abuse."
A second firebomb destroyed a vehicle owned by another UCSC animal researcher. A third researcher received a threatening phone message at home the day of the firebombings.
While no one has claimed responsibility for the Santa Cruz attacks, Jerry Vlasak, a spokesperson for the animal rights extremist movement who has said that he considers the assassination of scientists working in biomedical research in order to save animals a "morally justifiable solution," issued a statement blaming the victims for the attack.
"It's regrettable that certain scientists are willing to put their families at risk by choosing to do wasteful animal experiments…it is unreasonable not to expect consequences." In a separate interview, Vlasak further defended the attacks, saying, "The inconvenience and the suffering of any children or any family members pales in comparison to the suffering and oppression that goes on in these animal laboratories."
The FBI, Santa Cruz police, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, UCSC Police and the state Fire Marshal's office are collaborating on the investigation. The first firebombing attack is being investigated as attempted homicide.
The Campaign Against UC
Several months before the firebombings in Santa Cruz, six masked demonstrators attempted to enter the home of a University of California - Santa Cruz (UCSC) scientist during her daughter's birthday party. One of the intruders allegedly hit her husband with an unidentified object before running off with the rest of the group. While no one claimed responsibility for the incident, weeks prior, sidewalks and driveways in front of several UCSC biomedical researchers' homes were vandalized with chalk condemning alleged animal abuse at the university.
The attacks against UCSC employees are the latest in a series of incidents since 2006 targeting University of California (UC) employees across the state, most notably at UCLA.
In February 2008, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the most active extreme animal rights movement in the country, claimed responsibility for firebombing the home of Edythe London, a UCLA primate researcher. ALF previously claimed responsibility for flooding London's home in October 2007. In its communiqué at that time, ALF threatened to return. "It would have been just as easy to burn your house down Edythe. As you slosh around your flooded house consider yourself fortunate this time."
In July 2006, ALF claimed responsibility for leaving an incendiary device on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, the director of the Center for Primate Neuroethology at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, because of her involvement in animal experimentation. The incendiary device, however, was not left at her home, but at a nearby home owned by a 70-year-old woman, according to the FBI. Arson investigators said the device failed to ignite, but had it functioned properly, it would have made escape difficult or impossible.
ALF has also claimed responsibility for burning a UCLA commuter van parked overnight in a park-and-ride lot in Irvine and for sending a letter with razor blades to the wife of a UCLA researcher. The letter stated, "If your husband can't stop himself from his obsession to torture monkeys maybe you can. If not then tell him that we will do exactly what he does to monkeys to you."
The Animal Liberation Brigade (ALB), an apparent extreme animal rights cell that previously claimed responsibility for setting off two pipe bombs at a biotechnology company in Emeryville, California, has also been involved in the campaign against UCLA.
ALB claimed responsibility for planting an incendiary device under the car of Arthur Rosenbaum, the chief of pediatric ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute in June 2007. The communiqué, which includes the doctor's address, warned: "you need to watch your back because next time you are in the operating room or walking to your office you just might be facing injections into your eyes like the primates, you sick twisted f--k." The communiqué also contends that activists must realize that "just demonstrating won't stop this kind of evil."
Researchers at other schools in the UC system, including UC - Berkeley, UC - Davis, UC - San Francisco and UC - San Diego, have been targeted as well. More than 30 UC Berkeley employees have reportedly been harassed at their home or elsewhere. Many of them, and others in the Bay Area, have had their homes vandalized or otherwise damaged. A faculty member at UC - San Francisco reportedly receiving a death threat.
In response to this campaign, and in particular to the firebombing of Edythe London's home, the University of California's Board of Regents obtained a restraining order, and later a preliminary injunction, that prohibits five individuals as well as ALF, ALB and the Primate Freedom Project, a group that has used its Web sites to post information about UCLA scientists, from harassing UCLA researchers.
Despite Board of Regents' effort, there is little to prevent underground animal rights extremists from continuing their activity. Many animal rights extremists operate in small and loosely affiliated cells and most of the attacks remain unsolved.
Primate Freedom Project
The Primate Freedom Project (PFP), a group with chapters around the U.S. that describes itself as "dedicated to ending the use of nonhuman primates in scientific experiments, has had a key role in the campaign against the University of California.
PFP set up a Web site dedicated to ending "the use of primates in biomedical and harmful behavioral experimentation" at UCLA which included a "target" list of UCLA personnel. In addition to photographs and home addresses of UCLA employees, the site featured a disclaimer saying that "those who consider themselves part of the Primate Freedom Project UCLA chapter, do not engage in or encourage any illegal activities." Nevertheless, several of the individuals listed on the site were victimized by ALF and ALB. Many of the UC Berkeley faculty targeted in recent months had been identified on a similar Web site launched to help end animal testing there.
Additionally, PFP applauded the work of its underground supporters. For example, following the attempted firebombing of the home of the director of the Center for Primate Neuroethology at UCLA, a PFP spokesperson said that the director "is riding a gravy train to personal gain, nothing else, and I hope the ALF stops her in her tracks." In addition to posting the director's address and photo on its Web site prior to the incident, the PFP site had featured a flyer intended for "distribution in her neighborhood."
PFP is currently prohibited from posting personal information about UCLA faculty on its Web site, after being named in a restraining order UCLA obtained in early 2008. The site has since been taken down.
PFP's presence outside of Los Angeles includes the National Primate Research Exhibition Hall, a museum in Madison, Wisconsin, that likens the treatment of animals in research labs to that of Jews and others who suffered during the Holocaust. The museum's Web site explains, "Like a Holocaust Memorial at the Gates of Auschwitz, the National Primate Research Exhibition Hall makes the clear statement that what is occurring in these labs across the country and the world is wrong and must be stopped."
The activity of animal rights extremists in the Los Angeles area in recent years extends well beyond the UC system. For example, ALF has also claimed responsibility for acts carried out against the city's Department of Animal Services and for vandalizing a car at the home of Deputy Mayor Jimmy Blackman in November 2007.
Also in November 2007, ALF claimed responsibility for vandalizing the home of Deborah Villaraigosa, sister of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, stating, "The mayor is the person who can make the killing come to an end. This is why we covered Deborah's black SUV with tons of stripper and poured red paint all over the steps, walkway and fancy ornamental light fixtures. [Mayor] Villaraigosa deserves to be bumped off like the dogs and cats we witnessed with their eyes wide, terrified before they were bumped off. He got off way to [sic] easy."
California experienced a similar spike in activity in late 2004 and early 2005. ALF and the Earth Liberation Front, the most active environmental extremism movement in the U.S., claimed responsibility for planting bombs at three housing developments, vandalizing fast food restaurants and other criminal activity.
Jerry Vlasak
The campaign against the University of California began several months after a major animal rights conference was held in Los Angeles. The "Animal Rights 2005 National Conference," featured representatives of the Primate Freedom Project (PFP) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a radical animal rights group known for posting on its Web site the names, addresses, phone numbers and other personal information of people who work at companies doing business with its primary target, Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British-based research firm that runs an animal testing laboratory in New Jersey.
Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon in Southern California who co-founded the Woodland Hills-based North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which shares information and statements from extremist cells that commit criminal activity, was also in attendance.
Vlasak regularly advocates killing humans in order to save animals during interviews with print and broadcast media. He has referred to the notion of murdering medical researchers in order to save laboratory animals as a "morally justifiable solution," and has stated that, "if animal abusers aren't going to stop perpetrating these types of atrocities, they ought to be stopped using whatever means necessary."
During an animal rights conference in Los Angeles in 2003, Vlasak told an audience that the assassination of scientists working in biomedical research would save millions of animals' lives. "I don't think you'd have to kill—assassinate—too many vivisectors," Vlasak continued, "before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on. And I think for five lives, ten lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, two million, ten million non-human lives."
The tactics and ideology promoted by Vlasak have increasingly been put into practice by animal rights extremists targeting the UC system.
Vlasak blames targeted researchers for any harm done to them. Following the firebombing of a UCLA primate researcher's home in February 2008, for example, Vlasak stated, "This recent attack should come as no surprise to [Edythe] London; I wouldn't be astonished if she remains a target until she stops her heinous experiments upon these innocent and unconsenting primates."
In response to the August firebombings at University of California - Santa Cruz, Vlasak also implied that researchers knowingly jeopardize the safety of their families by testing on animals: "It's regrettable that certain scientists are willing to put their families at risk by choosing to do wasteful animal experiments in this day and age," Vlasak said in one interview.
In another interview, Vlasak said, "If their father is willing to continue risking his livelihood in order to continue chopping up animals in a laboratory, then his children are old enough to recognize the consequences…This guy knows what he is doing. He knows that every day that he goes into the laboratory and hurts animals that it is unreasonable not to expect consequences." He also stated that "The inconvenience and the suffering of any children or any family members pales in comparison to the suffering and oppression that goes on in these animal laboratories."
