It’s a dog’s life for Morinville bylaw enforcers

loosedog
Loose and barking dogs accounted for more than 25 per cent of bylaw enforcement calls Community Peace Officers made in the last quarter of 2012. – Morinville News File Photo

By Stephen Dafoe

Morinville – Community Peace Officers (CPO) continued to respond to a variety of calls in the final quarter of 2012. CPOs responded to 308 calls between October and December, issuing plenty of educational warnings and 14 tickets.

While calls ranged from false alarms to complaints about snow removal, the majority of the quarter’s 14 tickets were related to dogs. Nine of the 14 tickets issued in the quarter were for failing to license a dog, barking dogs, dogs being at large and even dog bites. Man’s best friend accounted for more than 25 per cent of total CPO calls between October and December. Eighty-four of the 308 bylaw calls in the fourth quarter were related to dogs. Thirty-three of those were dog bite complaints or follow-ups. Another 30 were dealing with lost, abandoned or at large dogs.

During the quarter CPOs also continued to work with the Morinville Veterinary Clinic on animal services. Of the 83 dogs impounded during 2012, 71 were returned to their rightful owner. The same was not true for cats. In 2012, 97 cats were impounded in Morinville. Of that number 14 were returned to their owners and another 71 were adopted out. Six cats were euthanized in 2012, 12 less than were put down in 2011.

Morinville’s Director of Corporate Operations suggested the high rate of return on dogs was due to Morinville’s licencing of dogs. He said licensing cats may be something the community may wish to consider to better enable lost cats to be returned to owners.

Snow problem

Councillor Lisa Holmes expressed concern that 58 snow removal warnings were issued and no tickets were handed out. “We’re not giving out tickets and that needs to stop,” Holmes said. Schafer said the majority of warnings resulted in removal within 24 hours.

Traffic dominates tickets

Traffic enforcement continued to dominate the ticket writing hand of Morinville’s Community Peace Officers. Forty-eight provincial traffic warnings were given and 61 tickets issued.

The majority of warnings were related to vehicles blocking intersections or being otherwise illegally parked. The majority of tickets issued (18) were for speeding.

Below are 2012 fourth quarter stats.

bylaw2

bylaw1

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

2 Comments

Comments are closed.