As Chicago's animal control department is understaffed, police left to respond to calls
Amid excessive overtime and a lack of recruitment by the Chicago Police Department, new data show that CPD police officers have been bogged down with answering animal-related calls for service despite the fact that a city department is dedicated to providing the service.
Whether it's Chicago police officers loading stray dogs into their patrol cars, or officers spending their own money on leashes and dog food, they've been busy with animals. The problem is putting a spotlight on the city's embattled Department of Animal Care and Control.
"I just feel like if we don't do it, it just doesn't get done," said Tatiana Soto, a single mother.
When she's not busy, Soto is part of an eccentric "search and rescue" unit in Chicago, but she's not on the city's payroll. She works entirely for free to track down and catch stray dogs.
"It used to be just a few every now and then that I see on Facebook, but now probably within a day, I probably see about 20 to 30 dogs out there lost, and people just try to stay away from calling animal control because when they do, they say they don't come," said Soto.
The lack of help resulted in what Soto and other animal advocates described as a "stray dog crisis" that has inundated the city's Department of Animal Care & Control. It led to volunteers like her to step up.
"If I call CACC and it's been a good two hours, I'll call the police station and they usually come faster than CACC, which they probably shouldn't," said Soto.
The trend of leaning on Chicago police to handle animal-related calls has raised concerns within the department. Officers who did not want to speak on camera told CBS News Chicago that the added responsibility is taking a toll. They said if they're not being attacked by the animals, they spend their own money to buy dog treats and leashes to assist them while on duty.
In one report of a recent incident, obtained by CBS News Chicago, an officer responded to a "vicious" dog on the South Side and attempted to apprehend the stray when it bit both of his hands. The bite broke the offer's skin and sent them to the hospital.
In another incident, also on the South Side, Chicago police officers had to respond to a "vicious dog chained to a tree" after numerous service calls to Animal Care & Control went unanswered for hours. The dog eventually broke free and attacked two children.
In that case, officers tased the animal.
An analysis of data from the first half of the year found that Chicago police personnel have handled more than 800 stray animal cases citywide, compared to the 1,262 taken into a shelter by Animal Control officers themselves. That represented a 45% jump from what Chicago police dealt with last year, a trend insides believe is only going to get worse.
"Now you have animals as another problem for them, untrained officers at that, because to the best of my knowledge, they are not trained in the academy on how to handle animal situations," said Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th).
Sposato, a member of the Chicago City Council's Committee on Police and Fire, said it all boiled down to money.
"The budget needs to be bigger," he said. "It's plain and simple and I don't know, everybody wants more money and you're cutting from everybody."
The current annual budget for the city's Department of Animal Care & Control is capped at nearly $7.6 million. About 76% of the budget, or about $5.8 million, goes toward staffing.
A spokesperson for Animal Care & Control said the department has 16 animal control officers, three supervisors and four inspectors on staff. There were just 14 actively working in the field after accounting for employees on leave of absence, in the third-largest city in the U.S.
With a high volume of service calls that averaged 132 per day, the department acknowledged it has been inundated and overwhelmed. For volunteers like Soto, major reform for the department is long overdue.
"I just think they need to clean house and actually get people who wanna do the job," she said. "You have to be an animal lover to do that job and you actually want to get out and do it."
A spokesperson for CPD said that officers respond to animal-related incidents as part of a department policy where live animals are, as they put it, "inventoried … as a last resort when other options are not feasible."
The city's Animal Control department said they are interviewing to fill in a number of vacant positions due to retirements and leaves.
