City Manager announces Dallas Animal Services reorganization

As requested at the City Council briefing meeting on August 30, 2016, staff is preparing an implementation plan for the strategic recommendations prioritized for FY16-17 by The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) report on loose dogs in Dallas. This plan will be briefed to Quality of Life & Environment Committee on September 26, 2016.

The BCG report made clear that improving public safety and animal welfare requires a different leadership approach and the full commitment of the City and partner organizations. Since about 2009, Dallas Animal Services (DAS) and its manager have reported directly to the director of Code Compliance. Effective today, I am reassigning Deputy Chief Robert Sherwin of DPD to assume leadership of DAS, as my direct report. As you will recall, Deputy Chief Sherwin, Major Barbara Hobbs, and a DPD team have been assigned to DAS in a supporting role since May, following the fatal attack of Antoinette Brown by loose dogs in a South Dallas neighborhood.

The DPD team has a good head start in understanding DAS operations and that will serve them well as they assume full control of DAS and implementation of the strategic recommendations. Deputy Chief Sherwin is a 29-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department and was previously in command of the Crimes Against Persons Division. Major Hobbs, a 29-year DPD veteran previously assigned to the Northeast Patrol Division, will continue to back up Sherwin at DAS.

In my conversations with both Chief David Brown and interim Chief David Pughes, both have expressed support for this use of DPD support for DAS to leverage improvements in Dallas neighborhoods and ultimately help DPD public safety operations in the field.

Additionally, a standing task force of leaders in the City organization, including Communication & Information Services, Dallas Police Department, Business Development & Procurement, City Attorney’s Office, Communication & Information Services, Civil Service, Code Compliance Services, Court & Detention Services, Equipment & Building Services, Human Resources, Judiciary, Public Information Office and Sustainable Construction & Development, will support the implementation project for the successful completion of goals and metrics. The reporting of DAS directly to the city manager is designed to make it clear this effort is to have all departments working to accomplish these objectives as well as to make it easier to expedite any resource allocation questions.

While we expect that the assignment of a DPD managed task force will need about six months to get the job done, the objective is to get recommendations that improve services and operations implemented, well underway, and/or fully operational before any changes in the organizational structure are made. The question of whether to relocate the Dallas Animal Services unit to another area of the City organization in any designation will be made once the other recommendations are in place. This approach is designed to speed the impact of improvements to services and operations.

Lastly, the task force effort will be reaching out to outside parties who have expressed a desire to help to get on board and help make things happen quickly.