In the last three years, leaders with San Antonio Animal Care Services (ACS) say they have identified almost 400 repeat offenders—addresses with more than one bite, or a bite and an additional citation.
Interim ACS Director Michael Shannon says they began looking into this trend after a string of recent bite incidents.
“We took a look at several of them. Several of them are repeat instances, repeat owners, repeat addresses,” Shannon said. “They're in our system, they've had a bite before, and now there's a bite again… This is a repeat irresponsible pet owner.”
He told councilmembers at last week's Public Safety Committee that ACS feels that's unacceptable.
“If you can't control your animal, especially your dogs, and can't prevent bites, we need to use those higher penalties,” he said.
Shannon says those pet owners are the subject of new outreach efforts, making sure they're in compliance with city code.
“We need to go knock on those doors before we get the next 311 call,” Shannon said.
ACS highlighted 378 of these repeat addresses across the city. 252 with multiple bite incidents and 126 with a bite incident, plus an ACS citation after that.
“It was a bit surprising, but we've known that this was a problem for some time now,” said Councilman Marc Whyte, who represents District 10.
Whyte says he was happy to hear ACS has already visited 85 properties so far in October, adding it's on the government to make sure dog owners the penalties if their dogs don't get loose.
“Because when they are, we see what's happening. They're doing harm to our to our people,” Whyte said.
In December, the council will vote on raising the fines for repeat offenders.
“We need to get stricter as a whole, on how we are holding negligent dog owners accountable,” said District 7's Marina Alderete Gavito, who is leading the effort with a Council Consideration Request.
Her proposal also includes more spaying and neutering and a change to the way you report dangerous dogs.
But in the meantime, for owners…
“The most important thing is that they know we're watching them because we can't have these habitual repeat instances of dangerous conditions,” Shannon said.
Some of the questions we're still asking is why it took so long to come up with a program like this and how the citywill know if it's working.
The I-Team has requested an interview with Shannon and we'll bring you those answers as soon as we can.
