Even when it was clear that the evidence dogs did not pose a threat or demonstrate a pattern of aggression, the volunteers, whom the department relies on to exercise and adopt out animals, were told not to handle them.
L.A.'s animal services agency is understaffed and relies on volunteers. At one overcrowded shelter, dogs sit in kennels for weeks or months without being walked.Animal Services changed its practice in June, notifying staff that volunteers could start walking the animals, provided there are no safety concerns.
“We’ve gone back and forth around evidence dogs for quite some time,” Ramirez said at a Board of Animal Services Commission meeting in late August, explaining the new practice. At some L.A city shelters, evidence dogs are segregated from the dogs available for adoption or kept behind a locked door. “If you or I did that, we would be in trouble,” Tauscher said of keeping a dog in a kennel for an extended period.
The Los Angeles district attorney’s office charged the man who slashed Bruce’s neck with two felony counts, and the dog was adopted out last December. Although the department’s practice officially changed in June, some evidence dogs were walked in the past. Some volunteers told The Times that they took out evidence dogs on occasion and that the rules weren’t clear.Sibal said the department couldn’t detail how many evidence dogs are at the shelters annually because the figures vary. In late June, there were 15 evidence dogs at Animal Services, she said.
“There’s no one cookie-cutter answer to manage dogs,” Rose said. “We look at every animal as an individual and try to look at what’s best for them.” “We never had enough staff and qualified volunteers to exercise the safe available dogs and also the potentially dangerous, so we gave the available dogs priority,” Barnette said.
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