Writing a story about Thursday’s Dallas Animal Shelter Commission meeting is like trying to pick up a porcupine.
There is something prickly everywhere you grab it.
On the other hand, the meeting opened with an appearance by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins who told the commission that thanks to grants from concerned citizens, he had set up an animal cruelty investigation unit with two investigators and two prosecutors. Since January, the unit has handled more than 100 animal cruelty case “which is unfortunate for us,” he said, but demonstrates “how important this issue is.” Chief of the unit is David Alex, the prosecutor who sent DeShawn Brown, who burned Mercy the Pit to death in 2006, to prison for four years.
Oddly, the most positive note of this city meeting came from the county.
So, back to the municipal business: Among the more barbed topics was the way the upcoming city budget will affect Dallas Animal Services. As Code Compliance Director Joey Zapata told the commission, the plan is to eliminate the position of animal services manager. (That was the position held by Kent Robertson who recently quit before the city could pink slip him in a “reduction in force.”)
What this managerless style means, Mr. Zapata said, is that there will now be four people in charge of assorted work elements at the shelter. Yes, four people with equal authority over four different areas of responsibility which will sometimes overlap. There is no overall manager at the shelter, but those four will, instead, report to someone in Code Compliance at City Hall – a staffer who has no actual connection to the shelter except via reports and, maybe, communication with employees if it doesn’t shut down. (As it did in the instance of the cat dying in the wall. More on that in a minute.)
This manager-free theory of business management stirred responses from people on the commission and in the audience – nobody backs the plan except the bureaucrats who designed it. Former commissioner Jonnie England described it as a “trainwreck waiting to happen.” Former commissioner Andy Allen opposed it on similar grounds (and urged commissioners to advise their council members "whether they want it or not.") Others spoke against it because it has no “buck stops here” element.
And Commission Chair Skip Trimble urged Code Compliance to remember that “a dog is not weeds, not a stack of cars with no wheels...but a living sentient being.” The implication there is that you can’t just stack an injured animal on a shelf and wait until tomorrow to deal with the situation. Lives are at stake.
And nearly everyone who spoke urged the people in the room to contact their city council members and urge them to stop the managerial folly that will lead to even more embarrassing disasters at the animal shelter.
At the end of the 3 ½-hour meeting, you could tell there are people on the commission and off the commission who are embarrassed by the way Dallas Animal Services has been run not just lately but for some time. Yes, that goes beyond the incident of the criminal indictment of shelter manager Tyrone McGill for allowing a cat to die inside a shelter wall (photo right).
People also are offended by slow or indifferent responses by 311 operators to such issues as mutilated cats in Casa View.
And there’s a definite difference of opinion on how Dallas Animal Services should be run. Animal Services is currently run by Code Compliance – the people who issue citations for weedlots, old cars, bad plumbing and wiring, etc.
The situation appears to be this: People who have no experience in dealing with live animals are running an animal shelter as if it’s a pipe warehouse instead of a place to protect living beings. (Except that Code Compliance, in order to fill the void left with the suspension of the indicted manager, has acquired the services of a retired employee to do the work. Nobody asked how much that’s costing the city.)
As you may know, a panel of city employees attends each shelter commission meeting. At the June meeting the bulk of commissioners’ questions were answered with “We’ll look into that and get a report to you.”
At Thursday’s meeting, the bulk of commissioners’ questions (some having to do with the previous meeting’s inquiries) were met with Code Compliance Director Joey Zapata or Code Compliance Manager Laurietta Stewart (now temporarily in charge of animal services) giving the same answers they gave last time, i.e., they’ll ask around and file a report by the next meeting.
No telling how many animal lives are affected by this delay-and-promise-a-report style of response.
If you think glaciers are slow, you know?
Naturally, these Code Compliance professionals are somewhat defensive about their management of the shelter even though under their watch:
(1) A cat has been allowed to die in a wall, resulting in an indictment of the man in charge of keeping the animals safe;
(2) Dogs and cats tagged for “rescue” are frequently killed anyway (as a commissioner noted without protest from the Code folks). The dog was killed because it was a return and was listed as “food aggressive.” Yes, it was killed for being “food aggressive” – normally not a fatal condition;
(3) Snowball the Cat underwent a number of possibly unnecessary medical procedures because of a lack of communication among shelter professionals (and the cat died, anyway);
(4) Animal ordinance violations are allowed to linger while city personnel claim to be “working with them on that.” (Commission Chairman Skip Trimble cited two instances of violations that have persisted for two years and have each logged 42 citations from code compliance personnel. Apparently, these suspected offenders get citations for violating animal ordinances, get a visit from a code compliance officer, promise to do better, then return to their business as usual.);
(5) One city employee, previously cited as too cruel to be working with animals, used a catchpole to extract a cat from the night box at the animal shelter and broke the cat’s jaw, nearly strangled it and caused hemorrhaging in its eyes (even though the commission had recommended to the Code Compliance people that catchpoles not be used on cats.) Look for a report in the future.
(6) A buzzer has been placed on the shelter’s nightbox so that overnight personnel will know that someone has shoved a dog or cat into the apparatus – but, then, on Monday a dog was left in that box until 11 a.m. (on a day when the temp was well over 100 degrees)....
There are other things and we’ll get to them in a moment.
With the exception of a couple of Code Compliance professionals who actually are in charge of the shelter now that everybody in management has either quit to beat being RIFFed or been suspended pending a trial, most folks in the room appeared to be (a) irritated that animal services is under Code Compliance and (b) outraged that animal services isn’t a separate department run by people with experience in animal control.
OK, that’s the flavor of the meeting.
Here are some random notes on topics that came up during old business, new business and comments from the citizens in the audience:
--Someone in Code Compliance prepares reports for the commission, but even they can’t easily explain what the reports actually mean. The Code Compliance people promised to do a better job with explaining the charts.
-- Commission Chair Trimble asked why the city can’t get the district attorney’s office to give it a report on the progress of cruelty cases. Mr. Zapata said he’d been told the county was reluctant to do so. And during the public comment portion of the meeting, ex-Commissioner England, speaking as a member of Dallas Animal Advocates, said the group had met with David Alex, the aforementioned head of the DA’s cruelty unit, earlier in the month. She reported that he said there was no problem providing the info – there seemed to be an indication that the DA’s office had offered and the city had declined or ignored the offer. Expect a report before the next commission meeting, of course.
--There has been absolutely no movement on repealing the city’s Stolen Dog Ordinance that punishes do-gooders for picking up stray dogs and puts the dogs at risk of death by requiring that they be turned over to this animal shelter that is becoming notoriously hazardous for animals. Commissioner Chair Trimble noted that the commission voted to urge repeal at its June meeting and the council took July off, then returned to dive headlong into the rigorous budget process. So, expect a report later when the council gets time. No telling how many animal lives will be lost because the council doesn’t have time for this matter right now.
--A woman in Casa View in Dallas tried to report that her cat had been mutilated and its body left in her yard, but the 311 director did not offer any support. So, a commissioner explained, the distraught woman managed to flag down a passing cop who took a report. And, she subsequently discovered that there had been other reports of such things in that neighborhood. The Code Compliance people appeared to be unaware of these cruelty cases and Director Zapata said he would look into how 311 handles such calls. And, of course, there will be a report.
-- The “medical records” for Snowman The Cat (who died after receiving several kinds of treatment at the shelter) turned out to be not “records” at all, but recollections gleaned from interviews with shelter workers. Apparently, there were no veterinary records for the cat. Kind of an ugly story in which euthanasia was probably appropriate but because of a lack of communication, the cat was put through assorted procedures.
-- The animal shelter’s whizbang multi-million dollar air-conditioning system, custom-designed to help fight respiratory ailments in animals, either is or isn’t working, depending on whether you’re an animal supporter or a Code Compliance employee. Yes, expect a report.
--There may be a Dallas Animal Services Facebook page at some point, but Code Compliance is working with other city departments to make sure it’s properly established, Mr. Zapata said. Among the people in the audience was Shelby Bobosky of the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers – DAYL has a very active animal welfare committee. She told the meeting that events at the shelter had shaken the confidence of the young lawyers. Still, she said she had several young lawyers who would be more than happy to quickly set up a Facebook page for Dallas Animal Services. The offer was met with polite smiles. And I’m sure there’ll be a report later.
-- Animal law attorney Yolanda Eisenstein urged the commission to work to establish a new method of conducting dangerous dog hearings because in her most recent encounter with such a hearing in Dallas, the administrative panel (comprised of three shelter employees and a Code Compliance manager) refused to allow the accused party’s attorney to present evidence or speak. Instead, in an unsworn “hearing,” the panel simply listened to the complaining party and voted that the dog was dangerous. She won on appeal, but said she is concerned about people who don’t have lawyers and enter the hearing with the deck firmly stacked against their dog.
Attorney Don Feare, also an animal law specialist, was in the audience and noted that in Dallas the hearing is set up so that a 2-2 vote is for the city and against the dog. So, basically, the concept of “due process” is out the window in these dangerous dog cases.
--Attorney Feare also spoke on behalf of his latest client, Dallas Animal Services Cruelty Investigator Dominic Munoz, the guy who courageously went to the DA’s office about the cat in the wall and testified before grand jury investigating the behavior of shelter manager McGill. Feare says he has invoked the Whistleblower Law in an attempt to protect his client from a campaign against him by other shelter employees who are McGill supporters. Code Compliance Director Zapata refused to discuss this case because it is an ongoing legal matter. There will be a report later, but probably not from Mr. Zapata.
(Aside: That photo of the wall shows the hole cut through the drywall to extract the body of the cat Tyrone McGill is alleged to have left in the wall until it died. Doesn’t look big enough to have been a prohibitive expense to bring the cat out alive – it’s not a coal mine. And that dog in the big cone? That’s Bruce, listed as a 30-pound formerly stray Lab mix who is available for adoption at the shelter (see www.dallasanimalservices.org) – FYI, the Commission is concerned about the city’s ability to accurately label dog breeds in the shelter. Probably be a report on that later, too.)
