Blackberry Twp. man marks 25 years of documenting, fighting animal cruelty

BLACKBERRY TOWNSHIP – The calls come at all hours of the day and night with messages such as: “I’ll hunt you down and kill every one of you (expletive.) Quit making videos. … I hope I never see you at a rodeo. I’ll bust your (expletive) head.”

This year marks 25 years that SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness, or SHARK, founded by Steve Hindi, has been documenting animal cruelty through body cameras and drone videos. Threats laden with profanity left on voice mail comes with the territory, Hindi said.

"Everything about our combined psyche is about doing this stuff,” Hindi, 64, said. "We’re very small and in all likelihood, we always will be – because we’re full up of investigators and don’t have a single marketer."

Hindi and his partner, humane investigator Janet Enoch live in Blackberry Township near Elburn.

In 2018, SHARK – including Katherine Peters and Michael Kobliska, also investigators and part of the technical team – went to 25 states and Canada, documenting everything from bird shoots to rodeos, beagles being raised for lab research and government sponsored deer kills.

Locally, his drone recently documented more than 100 roosters being kept on nearly 9-acre parcel in Blackberry Township, asserting that the birds are kept that way for cockfighting. The property owner denied any connection to cockfighting.

But the drone they used is part of their collection of sophisticated equipment required to document animal cruelty investigations. Their equipment includes inflatable boats and two hovercrafts which go on water and land that they used to rescue animals and people caught in the flooding in North Carolina.

They also rely on body cameras to document everything and travel in a Mercedes Sprinter that carries the equipment and the investigative team.

“What we’re doing is trying to use technology to aid animals and the environment and even people as much as we can. and because technology has moved so quickly today, for us it’s very exciting,” Hindi said. “Drones can do incredible, wonderful things without putting people in danger in the air.”

Aside from some donations, Hindi relies on income from a factory that he owns to fund his passion for exposing animal cruelty and pushing toward laws to protect them.

One of the investigations of which Hindi is most proud is a 2016 video at U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe Annual Dove Hunt, a two-day fundraiser for Inhofe, R-Oklahoma.

In 2016, Hindi’s team was documented the hunt, in which supporters shoot doves on one day, and pigeons the next.

By 2017, Inhofe ended the pigeon portion after Hindi’s video showed volunteers throwing pigeons from a cage up into the air to be shot by hunters – and then the wounded birds were just left to suffer and die on the ground.

Hindi's website, www.sharkonline.org, is where that and other videos – such as the rodeo videos – are available.

Rodeo videos are taken by a drone, which flies 400 feet up into the air, looking no bigger than a dot, as Hindi demonstrated in a field near his home.

But the camera's aim into the ring shows clear close-ups of rodeo animals, in some cases, injured as a result of being chased and roped.

Hindi’s videos, posted online, are what inspired the profanity-laced voice mail threats left for him by rodeo enthusiasts.

An example: “This rodeo boy will come down and whoop your (expletive). … I rode a horse today. I beat the (expletive) out of him. I spurred him. I hit him like a (expletive) two-by-four. I roped his (expletive), choked him down and kicked him in the (expletive). … If I hear one more thing about … rodeos, I will come down there myself and I will show you what a (expletive) rodeo is. I will drag your (body) to Idaho because I have a (expletive) hanging tree.”

Hindi made a name for himself in 1998 in Kane County, documenting the treatment of animals at the Kane County Fair rodeo – and getting himself arrested for eavesdropping because he recorded an officer who came to talk to him. A Kane County judge dismissed the charge.

No matter the threats, the times he's been arrested, standing against animal cruelty is an important life's work, Hindi said.

"Animal cruelty never stops there," Hindi said. "Animal cruelty always includes potential violence to people or damages to the environment. It all has to do with the disrespect or even the contempt for life itself and the love of life and the circle that is this planet."