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Two dogs approach Tracy Moore and her daughter while they wait for a school bus on Nov. 20, 2025. | Courtesy Tracy Moore<\/p>\nThe first time Karen Hogan saw the dog she described as vicious, she was taking a walk last year on Jacksonville\u2019s Westside with her infant grandson.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t think anything of the dog until it began growling and acting like it wanted to attack. Hogan thought about grabbing the baby from his stroller and running, but sudden movement seemed like a bad idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept walking backwards, walking backwards, telling it, \u2018No, no,\u2019 and it kept coming towards me,\u201d Hogan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the start of a terrifying incident that thousands of people in Jacksonville have experienced in some form over the last several years. In Hogan\u2019s case, the dog would soon maim a neighbor\u2019s child, and her community would struggle to come to terms with his bloody attack.<\/p>\n
A growing number of grisly encounters in Jacksonville and beyond aren\u2019t just bad luck, according to some animal welfare advocates. They say more attacks are the result of a well-meaning policy known as no-kill, widely marketed to local governments by a set of powerful and financially invested nonprofits.<\/p>\n
No-kill is designed to save animals\u2019 lives, but its focus on keeping animals out of shelters, combined with a light approach to law enforcement, can leave more dangerous dogs on the streets, sometimes with devastating consequences.<\/p>\n
In Jacksonville, former animal control officers say limited shelter intake is contributing to public safety problems. Animal control officials respond that they assess situations on a case-by-case basis to protect the public.<\/p>\n
Roland\u2019s attack<\/p>\n
When Hogan saw the dog get distracted by something else down Marquis Drive, she ran with the baby to her son\u2019s house. She called 911. The dispatcher told her to hang up and call Jacksonville\u2019s general line, 630-CITY.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said they were gonna be sending a truck right out,\u201d Hogan said.<\/p>\n
She pulled up the blinds and watched the road while holding the baby. She never saw a truck.<\/p>\n
About a week later, Hogan\u2019s daughter-in-law shared a screenshot of the same dog taken with the family\u2019s Ring camera. Hogan called 630-CITY again and again was told a truck would respond. She never saw it.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, on Nov. 20, Tracy Moore, 41, was putting her autistic daughter on the bus to school when two dogs, including the one Hogan saw, approached her house on Marquis Drive. She took photos for social media in case the dogs were lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two dogs approach Tracy Moore and her daughter while they wait for a school bus on Nov. 20, 2025. | Courtesy Tracy Moore<\/p>\n
Her then 4-year-old son, Roland, was impatiently waiting for his mother. He wanted to give her a hug, Moore said. Eventually, Roland climbed over the Moores\u2019 short fence to reach his mother near the road, drawing the dogs\u2019 attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when that brown dog started getting nippy because Roland was scared,\u201d Moore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moore\u2019s 9-year-old son picked up Roland, who was crying and screaming by then, but one of the dogs pounced on the older boy\u2019s back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt scared the pure living mess out of him and he dropped Roland,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n
Moore put her body on top of Roland\u2019s, taking care to protect his neck. At the same time, a dog started biting Roland around his left temple area.<\/p>\n
\u201cI screamed for help for a good three to five minutes,\u201d Moore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like the movie \u2018Carrie\u2019<\/p>\n
Every morning, Barbara Girgis gets up early to feed the stray cats on Marquis Drive. Nov. 20 wasn\u2019t much different except that she saw two dogs. They were wagging their tails, she said, so she petted them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were not stray, dirty dogs. They were beautiful dogs. They were somebody\u2019s dogs,\u201d Girgis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when the dogs took off after one of her beloved cats, she was afraid, and she ran after them until they lost interest and continued down the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Barbara Girgis and her husband, Mike, talk on their front lawn on July 10, 2026. | Simone Endress, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n
After Girgis returned home, she thought she heard something, so she went outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like the movie Carrie,\u201d Girgis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Roland was on the ground covered in blood. Moore was on top of him while one of the dogs was biting Roland.<\/p>\n
Girgis and another neighbor were able to pull the dog away, but Girgis said the dog was relentless. It was fixated on Roland. She eventually picked up the walker Moore uses due to a disability and fended off the dog, an action Moore credits with saving Roland\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
The attack was over, but the damage was done. Roland was missing an ear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Kind of nonchalant\u2019<\/p>\n
After Karen Hogan heard what happened to her neighbors, she furiously called 630-CITY again to complain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me, \u2018Well, we don\u2019t send trucks from this number,\u2019\u201d Hogan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hogan, incredulous, told the operator she called twice before about one of the dogs that just attacked her neighbor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Now a child has lost an ear,\u2019\u201d Hogan said. \u201cI got a lot of action out of them when I told them a child was attacked. The other two times it was kind of nonchalant.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In response to questions about Hogan\u2019s calls, Jacksonville\u2019s Animal Control and Protective Services division said it had not received multiple alerts about the dog. But ACPS call logs that the Moore family received and shared with Jacksonville Today show Hogan\u2019s two calls on Oct. 29 and Nov. 5, with accompanying narratives.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoaming street again and [the dog] is aggressive,\u201d the Nov. 5 note reads.<\/p>\n
The no-kill philosophy<\/p>\n
The no-kill concept is an animal shelter standard holding that every healthy and treatable pet should be saved. A shelter is considered no-kill if it manages to release 90% of animals alive.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville\u2019s animal shelter has been considered no-kill in the past and now sits shy of the metric. According to a city dashboard<\/a>, Animal Control and Protective Services\u2019 current live release rate<\/a> is 83%. But Chief Michael Bricker has repeatedly invoked the no-kill benchmark.<\/p>\n \u201cOur save rate is over 90%. That is the no-kill threshold. We are clearing it,\u201d Bricker wrote<\/a> on his blog April 30.<\/p>\n In a response to Jacksonville Today just before publication, Bricker wrote that no-kill policies haven\u2019t dictated Jacksonville\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n \u201cSince I arrived in September 2023, we have never changed our response to a dangerous or aggressive dog because of a save-rate target or a no-kill goal,\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n Local numbers show a rising human toll outside of the shelter despite Bricker\u2019s statement. Roland, it turns out, has a lot of company. Jacksonville\u2019s number of dog bites has soared over the past five years, according to the local health department.<\/p>\n The Florida Department of Health in Duval County says 585 people were bitten by dogs in 2022.\u00a0In 2023, that number nearly quadrupled to 2,155, and it jumped again 47% the next year, to 3,173.<\/p>\n Jacksonville\u2019s ACPS has different numbers. That\u2019s understandable because health departments and public safety agencies don\u2019t have the same missions. The health department says its numbers generally depend on reports from medical providers, while ACPS\u2019 figures come from community calls.<\/p>\n ACPS says its own data doesn\u2019t reflect the big increase in bites. Numbers stayed nearly flat at around 1,100 for 2022 and 2023, ACPS says.<\/p>\n Former employees are skeptical. They say the agency has a history of leaving frightened people to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n The change<\/p>\n Joe Casey is a former Jacksonville animal control officer of more than seven years. He said he wanted to work for ACPS indefinitely but ended up resigning in 2024 \u201cdue to a hostile work environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Casey\u2019s personnel file, obtained through a public records request, shows he was disciplined for using profanity and sending a woman a picture of a starving dog to make a point about a case.<\/p>\n Casey described what he considers a number of problems inside ACPS, including the call system Karen Hogan used.\u00a0<\/p>\n When someone calls the 630-CITY line, they don\u2019t get connected to animal control<\/a>. They talk to an operator who takes a message. Then, a shelter dispatcher decides how to prioritize the call. <\/p>\n ACPS defended the system, saying in response to a list of written questions from Jacksonville Today that multiple Jacksonville agencies use the centralized city line, pointing to the Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Fire Department.<\/p>\n Casey also criticized the amount of complaints that got attention. When he first started, he said, the policy was to respond to every call. But in 2022, interim Chief Marcy Gallo, who preceded Michael Bricker and later became his shelter manager, instructed staff to stop picking up so many stray dogs.<\/p>\n An email from Gallo, obtained through a public records request, even suggested a script about how the shelter was full should be used with people who call in complaining about strays.<\/p>\n \u201cNot all loose dogs are lost \u2014 many are familiar with the area, know their way home, and may lead you there. Allow them to lead the way,\u201d Gallo wrote.<\/p>\n In the same email, she said the ACPS leadership team was in unanimous agreement about the \u201ctemporary limitation.\u201d<\/p>\n Casey contends the policy wasn\u2019t so temporary and that it got worse under Bricker, who developed a system to further deprioritize calls not tagged as an emergency. He said complaints about animals considered nonaggressive were deposited into a \u201cjunk drawer\u201d and often wouldn\u2019t be looked at again.<\/p>\n Casey\u2019s description of a new policy coincides with Jacksonville\u2019s sharp increase of dog bites in 2023 and 2024. But Bricker says he was following policy established before he arrived and he didn\u2019t make significant changes except to advocate that officers use their judgment.<\/p>\n \u201cMy direction to the team has been to look at the actual situation in front of us,\u201d Bricker wrote in response to questions. \u201cA sick animal, an injured animal, a dangerous or aggressive animal, a cruelty case, or an animal presenting an immediate public-safety concern takes priority over a healthy stray animal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It appears Jacksonville isn\u2019t alone in its policy choices. The city\u2019s upward trend in dog bites is reflected nationally, too, and could be complicated by factors like the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, deaths caused by dog bites more than doubled from 2018 to 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n Best Friends Animal Society<\/p>\n National nonprofits, like the Best Friends Animal Society, have helped spread the no-kill idea to great effect, though that wasn\u2019t always the group\u2019s mission. Former members say<\/a> BFAS started as a cult. <\/p>\n The Process Church of the Final Judgement was founded in England in the 1960s by two people with ties to the Scientology religion. The Process\u2019 beliefs included worship of Jehovah, Jesus, Satan and Lucifer.<\/p>\n According to former member Timothy Wyllie<\/a>, England \u201cgot tired\u201d of the Process, and the small group moved to the U.S., where members eventually settled on a Utah ranch, dropped the religious focus and became BFAS in 1993.<\/p>\n These days, BFAS, which declined comment for this article, is one of the largest animal welfare nonprofits in the country. In 2025, it took in $166 million<\/a> in donations, some of which it uses to partner with local governments and nonprofits to spread its \u201cSave Them All\u201d campaign meant to make the country no-kill by 2025.<\/p>\n Rick DuCharme is founder of the Jacksonville nonprofit now known as EveryPet, which focuses on affordable animal care. He credits BFAS with changing animal welfare in the country for the better.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore Best Friends, nobody was talking about how many dogs and cats were dying in shelters,\u201d DuCharme says. \u201cNobody was setting goals to decrease that. It was all just doing the same thing over and over and feeling there was no other choice.\u201d<\/p>\n DuCharme said euthanizing thousands of pets forced shelter staff, often people who love animals, into making demoralizing decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aiming to ease those decisions, BFAS has invested in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n Between 2019 and 2023, the Jacksonville Humane Society was granted $4 million<\/a> from BFAS, the largest award in the country during those years. The Humane Society has used at least some of the money<\/a> to be a no-kill \u201cmentorship and training hub.\u201d<\/p>\n One of BFAS\u2019 lessons is managed intake, defining the practice<\/a> as \u201cany form of regulating or scheduling non-urgent intake.\u201d In practice, it means admitting fewer animals so that fewer face death in a shelter, making the 90% live release rate more attainable.<\/p>\n Although 23 governors have issued proclamations<\/a> in support of BFAS\u2019 no-kill goal, some cities are turning down the nonprofit\u2019s offers of help because of methods like limited intake that they say can leave dangerous dogs on the streets.<\/p>\n In 2024, Danville, Virginia, caught BFAS\u2019 eye for its number of shelter animals killed. The nonprofit offered a package of help that Danville rejected because it said it didn\u2019t want to close its doors to the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a news report at the time<\/a>, Danville\u2019s city manager said its open-admission shelter was seeing the \u201cunintended consequences\u201d of the no-kill movement, with more and more surrounding shelters refusing to engage animals that ended up in Danville.\u00a0<\/p>\n That same year in BFAS\u2019 home state of Utah, the city of Provo declined the organization\u2019s pitch, valued at $1 million<\/a>, to help start a trap-neuter-return program for cats.\u00a0<\/p>\n TNR, as it\u2019s known, is an initiative that provides for stray cats to be fixed and put back on the streets. TNR aims to thin out cat colonies while also releasing cats from a shelter alive. In 2008, Jacksonville became the first city in the country<\/a> to incorporate TNR into sheltering, an initiative sponsored by BFAS.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Provo\u2019s police department objected to the practice, citing a study that said TNR is effective at reducing breeding only if more than 70% of cats in a colony are sterilized, a number that is difficult to achieve.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Provo police department also pointed out that wild cats are an invasive species. They kill up to 4 billion birds<\/a> and 21 billion small mammals<\/a> a year.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the sleight of hand of no-kill, detractors say: Fewer animals in shelters doesn\u2019t mean less suffering or dying outside.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jacksonville\u2019s chief<\/p>\n With a budget of more than $6.8 million<\/a> to manage, former employees say ACPS Chief Bricker has a \u201cdemanding\u201d job. He\u2019s likely understaffed, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Currently, the National Animal Control Association says there\u2019s no universal metric for how many animal control officers a city needs. But an older NACA benchmark recommends one officer for every 18,000 residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jacksonville would need 57 officers under that metric; it has 20, according to the shelter\u2019s website. <\/a><\/p>\n Bricker doesn\u2019t have much experience leading even a small team of animal control officers, though, according to his resume. His past roles mostly consisted of private sector and nonprofit work, including several positions with BFAS. One of those jobs was at the group\u2019s headquarters in Utah.\u00a0<\/p>\n In response to questions about Bricker\u2019s credentials, City Administrative Services Director Al Ferraro pointed to \u201cthe rising lifesaving results despite record demand\/intake of animals over the past three years under Chief\u00a0Bricker\u2019s leadership.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBricker\u00a0has been able to work with other divisions like the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office and Municipal Code Compliance Division,\u201d Ferraro said in a written statement provided by the city. \u201cIn some instances, we must immediately provide kennels or shelters for large numbers of animals. Sometimes this is because of puppy mills where illegal overbreeding of animals is discovered. There are times we do bring in 60 to 70 dogs in one call. In some instances, we receive large packs of strays that have been dumped off in neighborhoods, streets, and no notice at our shelters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018All across the country\u2019<\/p>\n Ed Boks, once a leader in both New York and Los Angeles\u2019 animal control divisions, now spends his days writing a Substack<\/a> that often touches on no-kill policy.<\/p>\n Once, he appreciated the no-kill movement. Now, he says, the term amounts to manipulation disguised as advocacy that raises large sums around an emotional cause.<\/p>\n
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Tracy Moore says she\u2019s trying to teach her son Roland that it\u2019s cool to be different after he lost an ear in a dog attack. | Simone Endress, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n