From September 1, 2012 through September 1, 2014 there were 3651 cases of animal complaints. In that same period, there were 168 reports of animal bites in Hartford. In a place where only 498 dog licenses were issued in 2012-2013 — Chester, Middlefield, and Brooklyn, Connecticut had a similar number issues in that time — the numbers look curious.
What the data tells us: people, across all neighborhoods and demographics, complain non-stop about animals.
Beyond that, there are unknowns.
This data does not indicate the seriousness of an animal bite. Was the incident a nip, a puncture, or a serious mauling? Was the biter a Chihuahua or a Wolfdog? Did this occur inside a residence or outdoors where the general public was at risk? Did that animal just come out of nowhere and attack, or was the person bitten doing something to antagonize the dog? Did the dog bite another dog or a human? Was the animal bite even caused by a dog?
Likewise, some of these animal complaints may include gripes about critters besides dogs, like allegedly rabid wildlife or the neighbor’s poultry experiment that wakes up the block at 4 a.m. These reports may include barking, disruptive dogs, but also pets allowed to roam off-leash and strays who belong to nobody and do what they want.
Some complaints were related to cruelty against animals, with most lacking any details. Aside from a few involving guns, one can only imagine if the cases involved pets left in hot cars, animal hoarding, neglect, or physical abuse. There were fewer than 20 cases of animal cruelty in this time period.
From this information, some problem areas are obvious by the numbers alone. But, this does not account for incidents that go unreported. Many of the bite incidents are at sites where other animal complaints have been made, yet there are sections where it appears that either a bite was out-of-the-blue, or, there were no previous problems with animals at the site, or, that the situation was dealt with in a way that no complaints were to follow.
In other instances, there are sites where animals have been reported as biting on multiple occasions. Is this one ill-mannered dog on site causing problems again and again? Different dogs owned by the same person? Another scenario entirely?
While some individuals might opt to not report a bite that does not break the skin nor snitch on every Golden Retriever they see running around loose in the park, the other side of this is that some people are willing to report any nuisance. Example: 37 animal complaints made for 106 Wethersfield Avenue in this two-year period, 75 complaints recorded from 2005 through current available data.
The animal complaints on the map are for addresses of repeat offenders, but this does not tell us in all cases how many are where the problem animal (or its owner) live and how many were just creating problems at a given site. By zooming in on the map, one can see that many complaints are in clusters, suggesting that in some cases, the issue may be a roaming animal — not that an entire block has out-of-control dogs. By looking at the database more closely, tracking every last reported complaint would show how widespread this is.
Are the animals that live in Blue Hills, the South West neighborhood, and the north part of the West End especially well-behaved or is there less reporting of problems there? These are neighborhoods where single-family homes are the norm and where many have fenced yards, with those fences being in good repair.
Tony C
Very interesting. I’m wondering if the NRZ’s will use this type of data. If I were the Barry Square NRZ, I’d be making noise with the city and brainstorming on how to improve this quality of life issue.
Kerri Provost
We have too few animal control officers for Hartford is part of it. Unlike blight where the target is static, these nuisances move around. Almost nobody has bothered to register/license their dogs, which tells us that many are also probably lacking rabies shots and what have you. There are a lot of issues here.