Alt Mail 6
Jerry Pournelle
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Every now and then we get something long that doesn't fit anywhere else. It has been a while since we did an altmail but this one deserves a place.
For what else is in altmail see the altmail home page.
What is is like to live in an Empire, "self governing" under the tender mercies of the Federal Government?
Washington DC is such a place and always has been. So what the feds do there, where they have the right to govern as they see fit and where they are often in transit -- a few actually live there, although generally in areas under the Capitol Police rather than the regular cops -- seems like a good portent for the future of us all.
So here we have a slice of life in the Imperial City.
When Patsy Bit Cookie, the City Went Crazy
By Marc Fisher Thursday, July 10, 2003; Page B01
We don't get a whole lot of surround-the-house police action where I live, so when the D.C. cops showed up at Marlene Gibbons's place, the neighbors were more than a bit curious. And when everyone learned just why the police were there, and why they came back at least three times, sometimes with two cruisers and a van, and why they had a search warrant, and why three judges, five lawyers and four city agencies were involved, well, now it's the neighbors who feel like surrounding somebody's house.
The cause of all this hullabaloo is named Patsy. Patsy is a dog. Patsy belongs to Marlene Gibbons and her 8-year-old daughter, Olivia. The city wants the dog because one of Gibbons's neighbors said the dog is dangerous; as one police officer put it, "This dog could harm a child."
"But, officer, this dog lives with a child," neighbor Betty Rogers told the policeman.
That sort of thing -- actual facts, such as how Patsy got the highest possible good behavior score on aggression tests conducted by the Animal Rescue League or how Gibbons was perfectly willing to have her dog tested for aggression yet again -- none of this matters to the city's Department of Health, which has devoted untold thousands of tax dollars to the Quest for Patsy, or to the city's chronically understaffed Corporation Counsel, which somehow has managed to get its lawyers to all of Patsy's court hearings.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. It all started when Olivia wanted a dog. The Gibbonses had not had a dog before, so they asked the Animal Rescue League to find them an especially child-friendly, easy pet. The league found Patsy, a 4-year-old Australian cattle dog-shepherd mix. "Very even-tempered," the league's evaluators wrote of Patsy. "Confidently enjoyed human attention." Gibbons took Patsy home in December.
Each afternoon, Gibbons, a lawyer who sometimes works at home, and Olivia took Patsy for a walk. On May 5, while walking along Yuma Street NW, with Olivia holding her leash, Patsy, a 45-pounder, spied another dog, Cookie, a seven-pound white bichon. Patsy ran to greet the other dog; Olivia, holding her leash, ran along.
At the bottom of the block, Patsy "put her mouth around the other dog," Gibbons said. "That's how they play." She later conceded that Patsy bit Cookie.
William Seltzer, Cookie's owner, wasn't there, but he told me that his wife, Candida Fernandez, and his son-in-law witnessed the bite. "This dog was under the control of an 8-year-old," Seltzer said. "Sheer negligence. This lady didn't care at all. Showed no remorse."
Both families agree that there has been friction between them in the past, largely over a No Dumping sign the Seltzers put in their alley. Gibbons asked them to lower the sign because it was visible from her patio. Seltzer refused: "It was none of her business. I had words with her, but it was just a couple of seconds."
After the bite, the Seltzers took Cookie to the vet. "We were afraid there might be damaged intestines," Seltzer said. The vet did exploratory surgery and found nothing serious. "There was some skin damage," Seltzer said. "The dog is fine."
Seltzer reported the bite to Animal Control. That, he said, was the last he heard of the matter until I called him last week.
Two days after Seltzer's complaint, Gibbons was working at home when she heard a knock. Her daughter, home from school with a cold, asked who was at the door.
"D.C. Animal Control. We're here to take your dog." Accompanied by a D.C. policeman and carrying a long pole and hook, the animal control officer insisted on attaching the hook to Patsy's neck. While Olivia stood crying, "They can't take my dog!" the family's dog walker, Kevin Kernan, happened by.
"What's going on?" he asked. He protested to the officer that "Patsy's one of the friendliest dogs I know."
The city took Patsy, kept her in the van for eight hours and deposited her at the animal shelter.
Enter the lawyers. Within hours, one of Gibbons's colleagues wrote to Peggy Keller, the city's director of animal disease control, protesting that the action was illegal. The city had done no investigation; Gibbons had received no notice; the officer had no warrant; and no person had been attacked.
Keller told Gibbons's lawyers she would not release the dog, but two days later, the shelter director told Gibbons she was free to take Patsy home.
There, she found an envelope from Animal Control taped to her door. It wasn't over. Gibbons deposited her daughter at her mother's house, then fled with the dog out of the District.
Animal Control wanted Patsy back. The release had been a formality, an attempt by the city to clean up its dirty tracks and start over with the correct legal procedure -- notice and a warrant.
The next day, police cruisers kept Gibbons's house under surveillance, while nine neighbors watched the police. When Rogers came home with her own dog, police scoped around her car to make certain she wasn't trying to spirit Patsy away.
For several days, the police and Animal Control kept checking the perimeter of the house. "You're going to be seeing me around," the animal control officer told Rogers.
While in exile with friends in Maryland, Gibbons sued, seeking a restraining order against the Health Department. City lawyers were conciliatory at first, agreeing to Gibbons's proposal that the dog be taken to a neutral site for aggression testing. But according to several sources, Keller batted that down, insisting that the city take possession of Patsy.
Since mid-May, Gibbons has kept Patsy in a kennel outside the city. The kennel's experts have asked Gibbons and her daughter not to visit because it is too stressful for the dog to see her owners without going home with them.
The city still insists it needs Patsy for several days to conduct the tests. But Corporation Counsel spokesman Peter Levallee told me that the test takes "one hour." He said the city needs more time "because of manpower issues."
I never called Levallee, by the way. I called the Health Department and the animal shelter to get their side of the story. But those calls were diverted to Vera Jackson, public information officer for the Health Department.
Jackson told me simply to e-mail her my questions and she would "be happy to determine whether they can talk to you."
Ten minutes after I sent the questions, I got this e-mail from Jackson: "After review of your questions, it has been determined that since this is a case in litigation, it should be forwarded to the Corporation Counsel's office."
Levallee, of course, had zero direct knowledge of the case; the way the D.C. government works, that makes him the perfect spokesman.
He said Patsy was released from the pound because "there was an issue over whether the dog was impounded properly," adding, "We jumped through the proper hoops and sought to reimpound the dog, but at that point, the dog was out of the jurisdiction."
The city is acting reasonably, Levallee said. "It's a dog that could be dangerous to others."
How does the city know this? To this day, no one from the city has ever asked Gibbons for her side of the incident. "There was a complaint," Levallee said. Did the city investigate the complaint? "A complaint is sufficient."
He added this bit of comfort: "We would not necessarily destroy the dog," he said.
If Gibbons doesn't hand the dog over, "we could ask the court to force that to happen or find Miss Gibbons in contempt," Levallee said.
Later, Levallee called back to say that the city is no longer actively searching for Patsy but will execute its warrant if the dog returns to Washington.
As for Gibbons, she has had enough. Her lawsuit wends its way through court, but she's not holding her breath for rational behavior from the city she's lived in for 22 years. She's moving out of town. Far away. She had been thinking of leaving anyway, and this episode sealed the deal.
"I don't want a dog that's dangerous," Gibbons said. "But Patsy is not dangerous. I can't be worrying about something like this happening again. What the city's done is just ridiculous."
That's the same word some people at the animal shelter have used to describe the hunt for Patsy. Olivia's schoolmates at Janney Elementary signed a petition asking the city to back down. Neighbors created a Patsy Defense Fund.
Even the complainant, Seltzer, called the city's actions a "vendetta." I told him Gibbons had taken Patsy out of town. "That's a shame," he said.
There's a lesson in all this: Next time you need a police officer, try barking.