Reports of dangerous dogs have risen in Staffordshire over the past year – with Lichfield being a particular hotspot.
A police performance meeting heard that there had been a 22% increase in calls on the issue across the county.
It comes following the death of Ian Price in Stonnall last month after he was attacked by two dogs.
Senior officers at Staffordshire Police are reviewing incidents involving dogs every morning, a performance report discussed at a meeting on Wednesday revealed.
It added:
“In the last 12 months, there was 532 crimes relating to dangerous dogs injuring people or assistance dogs, which is an increase of 22 per cent (96).
“High volumes were reported in May (58) and August (60). The majority were dealt with by community resolution with seven charges; in a quarter of cases victims withdraw their support for an investigation.”
Report to police performance meeting
Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Ellison, from Staffordshire Police, said there were challenges associated with problem dogs.
“The XL Bully dog, which is now being debated nationally, is not actually termed as a dangerous dog in terms of legislation, which makes it very difficult sometime when we’re responding.
“The way the dog looks means we can get called to an awful lot of incidents – but a lot of the incidents we get called to are not what you would call a dangerous dog or even an XL Bully. They can be as simple as a tall Staffordshire Bull Terrier.
“And many of the calls we get to are not relating to a public place either, they’re relating to someone’s pet who is being held privately. The perception of someone who has called us is that is an XL Bully type dog or a dangerous dog, which is not always the case
“But we do deploy to every one of those incidents as a matter of routine now. Our dog handlers are on call 24/7 and an increasing amount of airtime has been spent dealing with reports of a dangerous dog, whether it turned out to be a case or not.
“We’ve seen more calls coming from Lichfield, South Staffs and Stafford but no particular reason. That’s simply where the calls have been and not all of those have related to an XL Bully or dangerous dog.
“At the moment I think the heightened media coverage of it has meant we have seen more and more reports coming through. Many are well intentioned, but many actually relate to a dog that’s not proscribed as dangerous, is not an XL Bully and not in a public place.”
Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Ellison
Chief Constable Chris Noble, speaking at the police performance meeting, said the rise in reports could have a number of factors.
“We have seen quite a significant increase in the last year around reports of dog attacks.
“In terms of some of the underlying causes, I suspect there is a variety of reasons. Some is probably people recognising the value and need to report these attacks which have been happening for some time before.
“Probably during Covid, whether it be a lack of training or lack of regulation, there are now challenges coming out around animals which clearly are not having the same level of discipline and even care applied to them.
“From our perspective part of the challenge is there is no obvious pattern across breeds or locations. There are some hotspots but not a particular pattern.”
Chief Constable Chris Noble
