TENNESSEE -- Gallatin officials want more time to discuss whether the city’s police department should take over animal control duties, despite a recommendation by Mayor Paige Brown that the move would be more beneficial for residents.
The Gallatin City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday to delay a decision at least two weeks after District 2 Councilor Steve Camp said he wanted more time for everyone to have a “better feeling” about the situation.
The city’s public works department currently handles animal control duties.
“I just don’t feel like public works got a fair shake in all of this,” Camp said Wednesday. “I just believe this is more of a political move … Even though the move can be beneficial, I believe the motivations for it are all wrong.”
City officials were presented with a request from Gallatin Police Chief Don Bandy last month to move the city’s animal control duties from public works to the police department after officials said some requests for assistance with dangerous animals have gone unanswered.
During the March 24 meeting, public works Superintendent Ronnie Stiles said neither the department nor the employees supported the move.
Despite meeting with both department heads in an attempt to find a resolution to the issue before Tuesday’s meeting, Brown said that she did not feel that there was “a strong enough case made” to keep animal control with public works.
“It’s not this department is wrong or this department is right; it’s that you have employees of two departments basically calling on each other to do work,” Brown said. “That creates a difficult posture when you’re trying to get something accomplished in some instances particularly when there is an incident in bad weather, in the middle of the night or whatever it may be.”
Councilor: City has ‘a problem’
Out of 647 animal-related calls received by the Gallatin Police Department from Jan. 1, 2014 to March 6 of this year, police responded to 398 calls and animal control responded to 115, according to police department data obtained through a public records request. There were nine calls listed where animal control refused to respond and 13 calls where no contact was able to be made with an animal control officer.
Last month, an animal control officer refused to respond to two separate incidents when asked to do so by Gallatin police, according to audio recordings obtained by the Gallatin News Examiner.
On March 5, Animal Control Officer Tommy Cox did not responded to a request to pick up two pit bulls that had an officer trapped in his car on Wayne Street, according to one recording. A different animal control officer did respond to the scene, but the dogs had already been put up by their owner, according to a Gallatin Animal Control’s call out record.
The following day, Cox also refused to respond to a call that involved a recently-adopted Australian shepherd that was reported to have killed one dog and was vicious toward its owner. In the recording, he tells police, “We don’t have anything to do with adoptions” and that it’s up to the dog’s owner to “take it back where he got it.”
However, in a Gallatin Animal Control call out record, Cox said he spoke with the dog’s owner the following day and was told the animal was not vicious.
“He told me that he was not sure what had killed the dog,” Cox said in the report. “He did not want to give up the dog.”
District 3 Councilor Jimmy Overton, who supports the move, said Tuesday the city has “a problem” and needs to resolve it as soon as possible. An amendment, which would delay the move until July 1, was approved 4-3 before the item was deferred.
“If there is a call between now and July 1 and somebody gets hurt in this situation because we’re not going out there, what’s going to happen?” Overton said. “Each one of us is going to be held responsible, and we need to be responsible and we need to do the right thing.”
Members are scheduled to discuss the issue at next week’s committee meeting.
(The Tennessean - April 8, 2015)
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