Following up on yesterday’s post on Claire Ward’s travails with the Richmond bureaucracy in the wake of the pit bull attack that claimed the life of her dog and left her with several injuries…
…Claire tells me that a half dozen nuisance warrants were served on the dog’s owners yesterday. This is good news, because it means that, finally, at least a couple of the branches city government decided to speak with one another. And it only took a week (and constant pressure, both from Claire and the very wide, and very deep, circle of her friends).
More disturbing, however, is what officials discovered when they served the warrants: more dogs were on the property, fitting an apparent pattern where animals are acquired, trained to fight, and then moved on to fulfill the seemingly endless craving for blood sports in some areas.
I mentioned yesterday that there was a court order lurking in the background of this matter. Two years ago, the owners of the property from which the recent attack originated were cited for having abandoned more than a dozen dogs, some of which were diseased. The property was condemned, but the owners entered into a plea deal where they could keep the home so long as they never again had another animal on the premises.
That was obviously ignored, and ought to be the starting point of any pending proceedings…especially when considering that in the intervening two years, animal control was repeatedly informed that dogs were on the property in direct violation of the plea deal.
I also mentioned yesterday that dog fighting is a growing concern in the Richmond area. But after reading this four year-old piece from The Hook, it seems that the problem has been around for some time…and is far worse and more widespread than I realized. But here is an interesting nugget:
Northern Virginia and Norfolk are known as dogfighting hot spots, according to a local animal control officer. In Richmond, Speaker of the House William Howell asked Delegate Rob Bell to carry a bill that puts some teeth into the existing statute against dogfighting.
“Putting teeth,” so to speak, into existing anti-dog fighting laws is a nice thought. But as Claire’s case shows, there is a substantial gap between a lawmaker’s good intentions and on the ground practice. Richmond’s bureaucratic wheels are beginning to turn, however slowly. But that they are moving at all, I suspect, owes more to do with her determination than any sense of mission in city government.