I want all animal lovers to take 5 minutes today and go activist with me. This is important!!!! If you have not been following the news, get up to date here. Councilman Scott Griggs is being charged with some pretty heavy ethics violations, FELONY level violations. While I support the city doing its due diligence and looking into the validly of the claims, it would appear after listening to the press conference today, that the claims do not pass the “smell test”.
No charges have been filed against Scott, but Dallas police have referred the case to the district attorney and they are recommending charges of coercion of a public servant, a third-degree felony with a penalty of two to 10 years in prison.
Ultimately, the city attorney’s office will decide what to do next, but you can have a voice. I can say with 100% certainty that the Scott Griggs I know as a neighbor and a councilman, the man that stands for transparent government and that represents and serves the needs of my community, that man would not say or do anything like what is alleged. If actions speak louder than words in life and in government, Scott consistently wins my trust and support – especially in an ethics “he said, she said”.
In our collaboration with Scott Griggs we have seen nothing from him but open communication, collaboration, and a consistent push for ethical, transparent, accountability from all city servants, departments, and employees. Without a voice to help set up transparency, ethical, bi-laws, charters, and policies we are all doomed. It will be business as usual which equals more dog packs, loose dogs, and an Animal Services that resists solving and supporting neighborhood animal control issues, does not properly train its employees, lacks proper policy and procedures, and uses behavioraly unsound approaches on most animals in their care.
Please show your support for Scott Griggs and for all he has done to move the ball forward on animal issues. You can sign this petition started by Council member Phillip Kingston to show your support. The petition asks District Attorney Susan Hawk not to send the case to a grand jury.
Need a little more persuasion in the “he said, she said”? Councilman Griggs took a polygraph Saturday morning at Joe D. Morris Polygraph Services in Carrollton. He answered three questions: Whether he had threatened Johnson, whether he had said he would break her fingers and whether he had gotten a timely agenda of the council meeting. Griggs answered no to all and Morris concluded he was being truthful.
Are you wondering why you should take action and why a dog blog is going political? I want to remind everyone how Gypsy Dog Ops came to be. There was a dangerous dog pack of 15 dogs roaming my neighborhood killing cats in front of people, attacking dogs, charging neighbors on their front porches, and creating an unsafe environment for residents. The dog pack parked itself in my front yard – for three years running.
The only reason this pack got any attention at all was the neighborhood starting calling Scott Griggs’ office for help and he stepped up to help a community in crisis. Even with this outreach on our side, Dallas Animal Services was not equipped or trained to catch these dogs. Not only was Dallas Animal Services incapable of catching the dogs, but to add insult to injury their actions were counter productive and making the pack harder and harder to catch. The pack continued to grow, breed, and become more dangerous each time a dog came into heat. Eventually the city ineptly shot the head of the pack with a tranquilizer gun and dart designed and set for a cow. They did not catch the dog and never came back to try. They left her to suffer and die a slow agonizing death. We only learned this harsh truth after we caught the dying Husky and took her into surgery and discovered the dart.
We did our homework and checked with experts, including the Dallas Zoo’s tranquillizing expert. The darting was so incredibly inept and or malicious that it endangered not only the dog, but the public. Our phone calls to look into the darting with DAS went unanswered. It was Scott Grigg’s office that facilitated a meeting. DAS took three months to run an investigation and they simply reported “we did not do it, that was not our dart”. No paperwork, no report, no explanation of how they arrived at that conclusion.
Through the many years of dog pack issues discussions, DAS and the City was, and still is, totally unaccountable to our safety and quality of life concerns and to the welfare of the community animals. Since the moment we pulled that dart from depths of the dog’s infected shoulder bone, I have been on a mission to make sure what happened to Tasha the Husky and her pack never happens again to another neighborhood or another animal.
Code Compliance, Dallas Animal Services, DCAP, and the Animal Commission do some great things for the city, but they are also failing a large sector of the city without any accountability. As we have worked to help the City and Dallas Animal Services understand the gaps in the system from a user and tax payer perspective, our feedback has fallen on deaf ears. We have asked neighbors to petition the City to address the safety and quality of life issues caused by loose animals roaming our neighborhoods. We asked them to ask City leadership to restore the DAS budget and to find money and a plan to help solve the loose animal issues plaguing our neighborhoods.
Dallas Animal Services, Code Compliance, the Mayor’s office and various other City officials did not respond to the neighbor’s emails and pleas for help. The resident’s letters outlined safety and quality of life issues from many perspectives. They outlined concerns from parents, teachers, runners, bikers, business owners, and members of the creative class. The City did not give the courtesy of a reply to 99% of these communications. Not even a form letter, nothing but crickets.
Since our journey started we have found and documented issues with DAS policy and procedures that unfairly cost animals their lives on a daily basis. We have documented ethics violations during a city investigation that led to employees losing their jobs. We have discovered and documented a breach of the Animal Commission’s charter during this investigation. We have documented mistake after mistakes due to Dallas Animal Service‘s lacking policy and procedures. We have discovered conflicts of interest between DAS, DCAP, and the Animal Commission. We have brought all of these issues to the City’s attention.
Scott Grigg’s office is the ONLY city official working to resolve these issues with concerned neighbors and taxpayers in a meaningful, transparent, ethical, and timely manner. His is the only office that has actively made outreach to our community to try to address animal issues. The “experts”, Dallas Animal Services, has regularly slapped the hand of the community, rescuer like you and me, to tell us that we are the problem. They remain unaccountable to meaningful communication and collaboration and they continue to let our issues go unaddressed.
Please stand behind Scott Griggs and show him your support. His is a friend to our communities and our animals. We believe, as do his supports and lawyers, that the allegations against him are a political conspiracy and are intended to be retaliation for seeking transparency and accountability from our City officials.
We need his strong ethical voice if our animal issues are going to be addressed for the wellbeing of the people and the animals. Don’t let the “business as usual” contingent get away with bullying, threatening behavior that abuses the legal system and cost the tax payers money and takes us away from a transparent city government that serves the needs of the people. It is election season – make your vote count! Early voting is open now. Sign the petition and vote!
Eight council member seats are up for grabs. The other six are running unopposed, and of course, there’s the mayor’s race, which features Mayor Mike Rawlings and attorney Marcos Ronquillo.
Early voting starts: Open Now!
Early voting ends: Tuesday, May 5th
Election day: May 9
Dallas Morning News Voters Guide