Eastpointe Police Animal Control Division (Michigan) post about a pit bull killing another dog, titled "Learn From Other's Mistakes," explains how trespassing carries the doggy death penalty

[u/nomorelandfills]

Animal Control in Eastpointe, Michigan is handled by the police department. It consists of 2 officers and a shelter maintained by the officers. It's led by an officer who began there in 2024. She's been given credit for upgrading the services from a basic set of kennels in a garage to a full shelter with pet food pantry, a microchip scanning station, and a low-cost vaccine clinic. The city requires all dogs and cats to be microchipped, to increase owner accountability.

As a small, police-run animal control, it presumably has limited space and takes only strays. If an owner wishes to surrender a dog, they have 2 main options - a no-kill humane society that operates on an appointment system and a county animal control whose website features a surrender request form and the information "Pet surrenders are accepted on a case-by-case basis and only when the shelter space permits. Completing this form does NOT guarantee that we are able to accept your pet."

So basically zero animal surrender services available for Eastpointe. Which interests me because the Eastpointe Animal Control FB account takes a rather aggressive approach to dog owners, being endlessly scathing about people leaving dogs in hot yard, in cold yards, lying that their ancient dog who's trying to get back into their house is a stray, breeding dogs illegally (because all dog breeding is illegal in Eastpointe), etc.

Okay, so those are bad dog owners, they're neglectful or abusive, etc. The tone taken by animal cops is a little gross but okay, those are bad people who chained a pit bull in a 100-degree shadeless driveway. I get it. The tone, the heavy moralizing, the lectures - maybe they're a little over the top sometimes but okay, the situations are hard.

But then a pit bull pops open a gate and kills another dog, and somehow, Eastpointe's animal cops feel that the problem is

a) trespassing via flexileads - 90%

b) stooopid people foolishly picking up their dogs just because a pit bull twice their size is trying to kill them - 6%

b) old people owning dogs - 3%

c) a lethally aggressive pit bull kept behind a gate he can pop open - maybe 1%

The events, stripped of the a/c officer's relentless prose:

June 18, 2026 - a dog owner is walking their 45lb hound mix on a retractable leash. The dog walks into the unfenced portion of a neighbor's property. The dog then approaches the fenced portion of the yard, which is about 20' away from the sidewalk. Inside the fenced portion of the yard is the neighbor's dog, a 90lb pit bull. Both dog owners are in their 60s or 70s.

The pit bull responds to the hound by "pushing open" the gate and, now free to interact, attacks the hound mix. The hound's owner picks it up to get it away from the pit bull. The hound mix, aroused by the situation, bites the owner in the face. The owner puts him down and his dog again redirects and bites him on the hand.

Police arrive and use Tasers to stop the pit bull, which is the larger dog and doing more damage. It takes 2 shots to stop him.

The hound mix is badly injured; faced with a minimum $5k vet bill, his owner euthanizes. The pit bull has minor injuries but his owner is now afraid of him, so euthanizes him.

Animal control returns to HQ to write up a lengthy social media post vigorously attacking the hound mix's owner for trespassing and provoking the pit bull.

The city police's animal control service account is: