Why doesn’t Animal Control respond to calls concerning “at-large” strays after hours?
Animal Control currently has a total of 11 Animal Control Officers who must provide field service coverage on an 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. day shift, 3:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. evening shift, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday weekend shift and 11:00 p.m. – 8:00 a.m. “after hours” emergency standby shift, 7 days/week throughout the County. Due to the small number of officers that must provide ample coverage on each shift each day, not to mention that the number of officers declines due to vacations, injury, illness, special assignments, etc., each officer routinely experiences working a late shift, followed by after hours standby duty. If this coverage required working a full shift, their work hours would be excessive and risk safety to the employee. As a compromise, the after hours emergency coverage must be restricted to responding to certain calls. Non-emergency calls and at large stray dogs do not fall in that category. If the officers began responding to such calls, they would be
