Letter to the Editor—Unprofessionalism of the Polk County Animal Control

By Warren Brown

About a week ago I made a post suggesting that we may need to look into PC animal control, I was quickly shown that was a mistake because you don’t criticize anything associated with our local Sheriff, lesson learned…However, Saturday night my sister-in-law’s Shih Tzu was taken, beaten to death, and stuffed behind the seat of her car. She had gotten into a verbal argument with the neighbor the night before. The responding deputy was nothing but professional, efficient, and kind, As Grady says “simply the best”….Then animal control came to collect the dog for examination, and as soon as the animal control officer got there clown music started playing.

The moment she got out of the animal control truck she started complaining about the smell of the dead dog, then she started laughing about how bloated and “icky” looking the carcass was, and then she started laughing and joking with the deputy who was already there. When the animal control officer saw my wife and her mother and her sister crying over what had happened the female officer laughed even more. After she threw the dog in a plastic bag and carried it to her truck, you could hear her telling the deputy how this was a waste of her time. The male deputy rolled his eyes and shook his head after she left. He did apologize for her behavior, but what was odd was that when we asked for her name and badge number he told us we would get it when we speak with the detective…odd.

Once again, I cannot make it clear enough that I am not here to attack Grady but unfortunately, the Sheriff’s Animal Control is not on par with the rest of the Sheriff’s department. Anytime they are criticized online The sheriff department says “Why don’t you adopt, volunteer, donate, and try to do something other than complain (great advice) many of us DO try to volunteer and donate and adopt but typically those attempts are shut down by the sheriff department with no explanation….they never seem to remember that when they tell us to do something proactive.

If there is anyone that knows what the best next step would be to escalate this in order to do something about animal control please message me…. I cannot stress enough I am not criticizing Grady personally, this is about his animal control.