{"id":3885,"date":"2025-10-14T13:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T13:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/3885\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T13:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T13:05:10","slug":"dog-attacks-keep-rising-in-sf-but-canine-court-hasnt-met-in-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/3885\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog attacks keep rising in SF \u2014 but canine court hasn\u2019t met in months"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rocky, an 11-year-old Chihuahua, was walking with his owner just east of the Panhandle when a pit bull began charging at him. The 10-pound canine was no match for its 70-pound assailant, whose jaws locked onto the tiny dog\u2019s belly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Panicked bystanders intervened. When the pit bull finally released Rocky, the Chihuahua was disemboweled. He died hours later, on Oct. 4, at a nearby veterinary clinic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Less than two months earlier, at Sixth and Jesse streets in SoMa, a black 11-month-old pit bull named Bad Ass had latched onto the arm of a 57-year-old man trying to protect his much smaller dog. It took two hours and 200-plus stitches \u2014 not to mention days more recovering in the hospital \u2014 to patch up the V-shaped gash on the man\u2019s arm.<\/p>\n

Normally, such brutal attacks, detailed in bite reports compiled by San Francisco Animal Care and Control, would land the pit bulls\u2019 owners in canine court<\/a>, a quasi-judicial arbitration system founded in 2001. A de facto judge would then decide whether to sentence the offending canine to behavioral training, muzzling, or, as a last resort, euthanasia. <\/p>\n

Since the city abruptly suspended all canine court hearings in late June, however, dozens of cases are languishing in a mounting backlog. Two involved dogs biting children. Another two accused dogs of biting police officers. Others left animals and humans variously marred or mangled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

None have been adjudicated, and it\u2019s unclear when, or if, they will be. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, dog bites continue to rise<\/a>. More than 800 bites were reported to the San Francisco Police Department in the first nine months of 2025 \u2014 putting this year on pace to break the record 868 bites reported in 2024 and the 760 incidents in 2023, after dipping to a low of 590 during the pandemic in 2020. <\/p>\n

Canine court hearings, for their part, fell from 159 in 2020 to 42 in 2024 and 32 in 2025. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first pause since the city initiated the hearings two decades ago in the wake of a high-profile mauling that claimed the life of a beloved lacrosse coach (opens in new tab)<\/a>. Last year, a dispute over funding led hearings to lapse for four months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From July through November in 2024, the city heard just one case, involving a husky that badly injured a toddler\u2019s arm<\/a>, in no small part because of how much publicity it received. It reinstated the hearings last fall around the time of another headline-grabbing attack (opens in new tab)<\/a> at a Safeway store in Fillmore, where cops shot two of three attacking dogs, one of which died.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this year marks the first time the hearings have ground to a halt with no clear plan about how to resume them. The agencies responsible under city law for overseeing the proceedings \u2014 the SFPD, Department of Public Health, and Animal Care and Control \u2014 don\u2019t seem to be on the same page. <\/p>\n

The lawyer who for years acted as canine court judge was fired over the summer, and there appears to be no plan about transferring her duties to a successor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Officer Greg Sutherland, the SFPD\u2019s one-man Vicious and Dangerous Dog Unit, continues to investigate dog attacks \u2014 but the cases are piling up with no resolution in sight. According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya, Sutherland had 21 cases ready to be heard as of early this past week, and was investigating another 25.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the SFPD acts as a prosecutor in the hearings, it hasn\u2019t led them since 2018, when a civil grand jury found (opens in new tab)<\/a> several problems with management by Animal Care and Control and the SFPD, including hearing decisions that didn\u2019t hew to the city\u2019s health code, inattention to due process, and insufficient support for the one police officer assigned to the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the past seven years, the Department of Police Accountability has handled the proceedings, lending one of its line attorneys \u2014 Janelle Caywood \u2014 as judge. Caywood, who has threatened to sue the city after the DPA fired her in August (opens in new tab)<\/a>, declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Janelle Caywood presided over canine court for years until her sudden dismissal in early August. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n

On paper, it seems the city wants to ramp up enforcement of dangerous dogs. After years of planning, the city on Sept. 30 finally inked an agreement with a federal government trust (opens in new tab)<\/a> to adjudicate dog bites referred to Animal Care and Control by Presidio Park Police. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the SFPD revised a policy to start enforcing the city\u2019s leash laws by either citing or warning owners for letting their dogs roam free outside of designated dog parks. That order (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which was last updated in 1994, is pending review of the police union.<\/p>\n

However, none of the agencies responsible for seizing dangerous dogs, bringing them to hearings, or appointing hearing officers responded to The Standard\u2019s queries about how they plan to proceed now that the DPA stopped holding the hearings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The SFPD confirmed that the last hearing was held on June 24, but said the department doesn\u2019t facilitate or schedule them, so had no information to add. Public Health referred questions back to Animal Care and Control, which in turn rerouted questions to the SFPD.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Internally, sources at the DPA said they were told by their superiors that the city had allocated no money to continue canine court hearings while meeting its obligation to police the police. <\/p>\n

The DPA took days to respond to requests for on-the-record comment before finally deferring to the mayor\u2019s office. A spokesperson for the mayor said only that \u201cthe money is there in the budget for DPA to conduct hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DPA and mayor\u2019s office have failed to respond to repeated requests for more details about the court\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mike Black, a Rottweiler attack victim who became a canine court watchdog, has filmed virtually every hearing for years. He cautioned that it might take another tragedy to force the city\u2019s hand again, and get canine court back in session.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised,\u201d he said, \u201cif things just continue like this until something really, really bad happens with a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rocky, an 11-year-old Chihuahua, was walking with his owner just east of the Panhandle when a pit bull…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2113,4734,4735,2116,236,101,103,102,104,106,105,4736],"class_list":["post-3885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-animals","tag-department-of-police-accountability","tag-department-of-public-health","tag-dogs","tag-police","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}