Commissioners taking second look at dangerous dog law

Photo: A memorial depicts dog owners’  dislike for Keechl’s law. Courtesy, Stephen Lang

A death row for dangerous dogs ordinance passed by the Broward County Commission in 2008 is scheduled for a review and possible revision this week. Florida law allows a dog two attacks before the animal is declared dangerous and must be put to death. However, Broward’s law, which supersedes the state, allows only one attack.

Broward County has euthanized 56 dogs after declaring them dangerous under the law. Two more are currently awaiting court clemency.

Broward’s law was championed by then Broward County Mayor Ken Keechl and passed the commission with a unanimous vote. Since the law passed, dog owners alike have stated their disdain for the law and filed lawsuits. Keechl’s support of the law even made him a target during his failed reelection campaign in which he lost to Chip LaMarca, who opposed the ordinance.

“I don’t think the county should be in the dog execution business,” LaMarca said.

Commissioner John Rodstrom, who voted along with Keechl and the rest of the commission to pass the ordinance, has joined LaMarca in agreeing that the law needs a second look.

“The limited number of animals that are subject to this ordinance are dogs who kill other dogs off their property and have not been provoked,” said Keechl. “So I, and my colleagues, felt that it was the appropriate thing to do.”

Keechl said that two city commissioners, one from Oakland Park and another from West Park, had come to him saying that they had seen a news clip on television of three dogs eating a cat alive. They pointed out to Keechl that many cities don’t have ordinances that deal with animals that kill.

Keechl said that he also spoke to dog owners who voiced concerns over the original writing of the ordinance, which deals with a dog’s natural instincts of protecting its property or master.

Though the law has been on the books for two years, most people didn’t know about the law until recently when an 11- year-old husky named Brandie was sentenced to death for killing a tea-cup poodle in Coconut Creek named Jack. Brandie, who had been housed for months at an animal shelter at her owners’ expense, was released last week as county commissioners take another look at the law. She is required to be muzzled as part of her release.

Unfortunately, Brandie’s story started with a common practice. She was being walked on a retractable leash by the mother-in-law of her owner when she met up with Jack, who was an unleashed but on his own property. A                  confrontation ensued and Jack didn’t survive. Prior to her release, Brandi was ruled to be dangerous and ordered “disposed of by the county in a humane manner.”

Brandie’s owner, Lon Lipsky, campaigned and rallied against Keechl during his reelection campaign.

“[The ordinance is] talking about 50 dogs that have killed other dogs. And every time a dog like Brandie kills another dog there’s a victim,” Keechl said. “For example, in Brandie’s case, it was a poodle named Jack. So it’s easy to say, ‘oh my god we want to save this dog.’ But what people are forgetting is that a dog killed another dog.”

Keechl, however, does not feel his support of the ordinance cost him reelection, even though some expressed their dislike for the ordinance via a “memorial” posted on a fence following the election. It featured Keechl’s name, photos of dogs, the words “B’BYE and a bag of dog poop taped to the sign with the phrase, “SUITABLE PARTING GIFT.”

“I think the vast majority of people who voted in the election didn’t even know about the issue. Commissioner DeMarca … made an issue of this, among other things, and there’s a saying that when you are in politics don’t deal with children or animals because there’s a passion on both sides of the issue. But I believed then, and I believe now, that the focus should be saving all those innocent dogs that we put to death every day.