Handling dog complaints burdensome, police say

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer

A month after being put in charge of barking dog complaints, the Honolulu Police Department is imploring the city to assign the responsibility to another agency.

About 200 animal nuisance calls come in every month. An officer assessing the situation must witness continuous barking for 10 minutes or intermittent barking for 30 minutes.

"Certainly, a half hour is a long time to take an officer off the beat," Maj. Doug Miller of the HPD's legislative task force told the City Council Budget Committee yesterday.

Committee chairwoman Ann Kobayashi, who called the informational hearing, agreed that police officers should not have to respond to calls about barking dogs and crowing roosters.

"We need to take the burden off police officers," she said. "You're already understaffed. We need you to be doing other things."

HPD assumed the responsibility Aug. 15, when the Hawaiian Humane Society stopped taking animal nuisance calls. The Humane Society, which has a $1.6 million animal-control contract with the city, did not receive an additional $80,000 and decided it could no longer handle animal nuisance complaints.

Kobayashi suggested the city initiate an audit of the Humane Society's contract.

Yesterday the committee approved changing language in the city's animal-control ordinance, replacing references to "Hawaiian Humane Society" with "animal control officer" — a change that could lead to putting the contract up for competitive bid.

Kobayashi also inquired about establishing a corps of trained animal-control attendants within the police department.