By Betsy Webster
Published: May. 13, 2024 at 10:41 PM CDT|Updated: May. 14, 2024 at 11:45 AM CDT
Editor’s note: Some of the details of this story are disturbing.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) - A woman bitten by a dog in KCK’s Strawberry Hill neighborhood calls roaming dogs a growing problem and is raising her voice to city leaders.
On the evening of Sunday, May 5, Jesse Molina was taking a walk with her husband and her dog Lucy. They saw another dog wandering the street unsupervised. In her three years living there, she’s seen numerous dogs roaming free. She kept a watchful eye but the dog seemed to be minding its own business. Then suddenly, the dog darted at her and Lucy.
The dog, which she described as a pit bull and police described as a pit mix, gave them no warning. No bared teeth, no growling. Just attacked out of the blue, unprovoked.
“It took all three of us fighting this dog off and I’ve never, I’ve seen dog fights and this is this was not, this was, it was a monster,” Molina said, clearly still so distraught that she had trouble finding words to describe the moment.
THE ATTACK
She said the dog lunged at Lucy’s throat. Lucy has stitches and staples in various places. Molina has a bandage on her wrist. I photo she took in the hospital shows a deep, gaping puncture wound. She began crying as she described the day and her fear for others.
“It just fluctuates between grief, sadness, profound depression,” Molina said of her emotional state. “And I think gratitude because we’re still alive.”
She’s been writing to elected officials. She wants something done to prevent this from happening to anyone else.
She thanked her Strawberry Hill community of neighbors with intervening to help. She praised the police department’s animal services unit officer who responded and started an investigation. And she wondered what the solution could be. More officers for enforcement? Stricter laws? More education?
WHAT’S BEING DONE
KCK police said they are already being aggressive with enforcement and education. Police Department spokeswoman Nancy Chartrand researched data on complaints and citations in 2022 and 2023, the most recent years available for year-end reports.
Chartrand said the department had a 26% increase in calls about dogs off-leash in 2023 than the previous year. In that same time, they had a 62% increase in the number of citations issued.
A municipal court judge makes the final call, Chartrand said, on what fines and orders to give for violations of several ordinances already on the books.
Ordinances require dogs to be registered, spayed or neutered, vaccinated and kept on a leash. There is an ordinance related to allowing a dog to reasonably place a person in fear for their safety. All are misdemeanors. There is a process for having a dog declared dangerous and requiring additional measures from the dog’s owner.
What they don’t include is automatically euthanizing a dog after a bite.
The current steps involve a 10-day quarantine. If someone admits to being the dog’s owner, they get the dog back pending court. In court, a judge decides on fines and restrictions. If no one admits to owning the dog, the dog is put down because the shelter can’t responsibly adopt out a dog with a bite history.
BREED BANS
Molina said it’s not the fact that she and Lucy were attacked by a dog in general but the extreme nature of the attack, which she attributes to the breed.
Bans on specific breeds have fallen out of favor in recent years under pressure from residents who consider them arbitrary, discriminatory, and ineffective. Animal rescue groups have argued against them.
The ASPCA has said, “Breed-specific legislation, or BSL, is the blanket term for laws that either restrict or ban certain dog breeds in a misguided effort to decrease dog attacks on humans and other animals.”
Wyandotte County had a pit bull ban on the books for nearly 30 years and repealed it 5 years ago. Nearly every other city in the metro has repealed breed-specific bans, moving instead to dangerous dog ordinances that focus on the behavior of a dog rather than deeming particular breeds, typically pit bulls, as dangerous.
MOVING FORWARD
Molina now plans to move to the suburbs where she hopes she, her husband and Lucy will be safer.
“I’m not going to stay in the city, but I’m going to make as much noise as possible before I leave,” Molina said. “And hopefully it will do something because I don’t know what else to do.”
Chartrand said the police department has been focused on both enforcement and education because, while some are willfully ignoring the rules, others simply grew up with a different perspective on what’s okay. She said the department partners with three outreach groups that hit neighborhoods daily to explain why such rules exist and direct them to free spay/neuter clinics.
There are many responsible pet owners in the city, Chartrand emphasized, but those who ignore local ordinances are causing a disproportionate amount of problems.
Chartrand said the number of reported dog bites is down slightly in the past 12 months: 35 versus 42.
She added that not everyone is willing to seek charges as a bite victim, and that is an essential step to holding dog owners accountable. She praised Molina for standing firm and encouraged others to show as much conviction.
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