During the public-comment period, Lynn Stickel, repeated claims she made during the board’s Aug. 6 meeting in which she asked the county to look into the incident as well as the conduct of the officer.
When she attempted to name the officer, Nick Picerno cut her off, saying it violated the rules that prohibit comments which are “harmful, discriminatory or embarrassing to any citizen, official or employee of Moore County.”
Stickel read a lengthy statement, repeating earlier claims that the officer did not pursue all “reasonable means,” as required by a county ordinance, before field euthanizing the five dogs and also alleged that his actions endangered public safety by shooting the dogs.
She said the officer simply shot the dogs because he couldn’t catch them.
She also did not buy county officials’ earlier explanation that the dogs were in such poor condition that they would have been euthanized had the officer been able to catch them. Two other dogs that were captured were euthanized at the animal shelter.
“If their condition was so bad, why were they so difficult to catch?” she asked.
The board did not respond to her statement. County Animal Operations Director Al Carter was in attendance but was not asked to address the board.
In an interview the day after the board’s Aug. 6 meeting, Carter said the officer, Frank Ringelberg, took the proper action when he shot and killed five of the seven dogs in the Jackson Hamlet area after receiving neglect complaints.
Carter said the dogs had extremely severe and contagious manage, were malnourished and had open sores and infections. He said they showed symptoms of distemper.
“They were obviously living in misery,” Carter said last month. “Had we left the dogs they would have continued to suffer. It was a very difficult choice.”
At the end of the meeting Tuesday night, during the commissioners’ comment period, well after Stickel left, Picerno said he was “so saddened” that the officer was being “taken to task for doing his job.” He also defended the decision not to allow Stickel to name the officer in her remarks.
“You can’t take people to court without their being here to defend themselves,” he said.
Picerno acknowledged that the officer “did make a mistake” in the past when he was sanctioned for killing a dog that he was unable to catch on a tennis court, something Stickel referred to in her statement.
“He’s human,” Picerno said. “That man has meant more to Moore County and the animals than about anyone. We need to stand by him,”
Carter said in the previous interview last month that the owner of the dogs, John Hines, told officers that a female dog showed up on his property about a year ago to eat food he was putting out for his cats and immediately had puppies. Hines was unable to catch them or run them off.
Carter said county ordinances state in part, “an animal which cannot be seized by reasonable means may be humanely destroyed by order of the animal operations director or person duly authorized by the animal operations director.”
He said Ringelberg first attempted to trap the dogs, but the man’s cats kept going into them. He said the officer put out food and caught two of them. He said the officer chased the other dogs but was unable to capture them.
Carter also defended Ringelberg.
“Frank is a good guy.,” Carter said. “He goes out of his way to help animals. We never like having to do this.”
He said officers bring in 1,600 to 2,000 dogs and cats to the shelter every year. He said the most that have been field euthanized in any given year was 12.
(The Pilot - Sept 3, 2013)
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