WDET News
- Parents in Southwest Detroit Fight Stray Dogs
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Apr 27, 2009Metro Desk - Link to Audio
After several dog attacks, parents in southwest Detroit are working with their local schools and the animal control department to find a solution to the city’s stray and feral dog problem. WDET’s Rob St. Mary reports.
(Click audio link above to hear the story)
About two-dozen parents are meeting at the Roberto Clemente Learning Academy on Detroit’s southwest side. In the center of the discussion sits Rebecca Brown… a 35 year resident of the area. Although she’s a shy woman, Brown has become one of the more vocal advocates for improving her neighborhood… especially when it comes to the problem of stray dogs. It’s an issue she says has worsened over the last three years or so.
“You would see five or six dogs running in a pack. The majority of them were pits. Kids were running, kids wouldn’t come to school, kids would call the school asking the principal how can they get to school because there’s a dog out there and they are deathly afraid of dogs. And my son was bit. Two mothers have been bit… and we just needed to get something done.”
Brown says in the past, individual calls from neighbors to animal control received little response… while police in the area took no action.
“They wouldn’t get out of the car and walk past those dogs but they expect you to or you kids to.”
A few months ago, fear entered the front door of Roberto Clemente Academy… in the form of a white pit bull. Parent Audrey Troyer.
“I was just glad it was friendly because we have like almost 800 kids here that are walking through the door at 8:15. I was just grateful that it wasn’t that mean of a dog because somebody could have got hurt or killed. Especially the kids, I mean they are coming in and people are screaming… kids are screaming because they was afraid of it.”
Troyer says the dog was corralled and animal control officers came to get it in a matter of minutes. And that quick response is a break from the past according to the parents. They say it’s due to the new man in charge of Detroit’s pound.
About two miles east of the school, in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge sits a white cinderblock building…Detroit’s animal control facility. Inside, the offices look like a police station from a 1970’s TV show. But walk through a door… and into the holding tank… and Detroit’s Animal Control manager Harry Ward sees a different kind of fugitive.
In his speech and movements, Harry Ward is a very deliberate man. He’s dressed in a black, police-like uniform. Under the shirt is body armor… part of the standard issue dress for Detroit’s animal control officers. But before becoming the head of the department, Ward worked with bigger animals… the elephants and rhinos in the Detroit Zoo.
“It was very hard to leave the zoo. But there are times when you want to move to a place of greater need and you have gotten to a point where you feel that you are up to it and that’s what brought me here.”
Ward says the city’s great need stems from the fact that… unlike most major cities… Detroit has large neighborhoods… and many of them now host row after row of vacant and unsecured houses. Ward says these houses are a new habitat for stray dogs and the people who want to breed them for money.
“When you add that to our unemployment rates and other social problems and cultural pressures where drugs and dog fighting are possibly one of the few things people have going for them in very harsh times, you have this mixture of many, many people breeding and fighting pit bulls or letting them go and all these vacating house for them to live in or for people to fight them in and you have a mixture that is quite different that other cities.”
In fact, the needs are so different that Ward says Detroit’s animal control trucks are specifically modified to handle the types of dogs they normally encounter… the so-called bully breeds… pit bulls and pit mixes.
“We, on a good day, are covering this city with four trucks. Take the city map, divide it in quarters and put a truck in each of it and that’s the coverage. And our dispatcher does a virtuoso job of understanding where people are and how long it will take them to get there. Only though really hard work and really incredible coordination do we cover the entire city with just four trucks.”
Ward estimates that on every third block they patrol… someone is breeding dogs for sale or fighting. The evidence of dog fights can be found in Ward’s pound… several pit bulls and mixed breeds are riddled with scars and missing flesh. It’s these mistreated dogs that often break loose or are let loose by their masters when they are no longer useful.
Rebecca Brown says parents were able to organize a meeting with the new animal control manager, last summer. That meeting changed the relationship with the department. Area residents now give animal control officers a solid description and location of strays. In response Ward’s officers scour the area… something that didn’t happen before parents got involved.
“You know he’s going to be there. You know he’s not going to say “ok, ok, we’ll be here” and CLICK and that I’ll be done. You know he will do something about it. We gave him a certificate and everything. We appreciate everything he’s done in our neighborhood and we will keep appreciating everything he is doing to help our kids to be safer to walk down the street or even play outside.”
Brown says since the beginning of the school year Detroit Animal Control has captured 26 stray dogs in the neighborhood around the Roberto Clemente Academy. Harry Ward says working with the parents at the academy and the nearby Phoenix Elementary School… has been great for one key reason.
“What these schools have figured out is how to get us information in a timely fashion that is accurate. With the thin force that I have, good intel is the heart and soul of good response.”
The parents at Robert Clemente Academy say their next efforts for neighborhood improvement will include graffiti, illegal dumping and street lighting.