The Greene County Supervisors recently approved a new ordinance.
The vicious animal ordinance defines what vicious animals are and how those types of animals will be handled. According to the ordinance, a vicious animal is one that attacks or bites a person, unprovoked, on two separate occasions. The incidents would then have to cause injury to the person above the shoulders or when the attack took place while the animal was running at large. Board Chair John Muir says they wanted to help law enforcement control future incidents.
“We don’t really address it because we didn’t have a way to address it. And now with this in place, the sheriff can go out and if there’s issues, (he) can take care of them. We had a couple of incidents that weren’t completely tragic. It woke us up to the point that we needed to have a way to try and avoid any tragic situations.”
The ordinance covers the unincorporated parts of the county and any municipality that doesn’t already have a vicious animal ordinance. If an animal is deemed to be vicious, the sheriff can possess it and hold it for 96 hours. If there isn’t immediate written consent by every owner of the animal, or no appeals are made within 96 hours, the sheriff can have the animal euthanized. The violation of the ordinance is a civil infraction of $750 for the first offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense.
County Attorney Thomas Laehn says the ordinance will go into effect by next week. To see the ordinance, click the link below.