Clark County, WA has nearly 520k residents in a 656 square mile radius. With this many residents, the County chooses to staff 4 Animal Control Officers. I said it, 4. Currently, their AC Manager is also an officer, doubling his workload, and effectively leaving us with 3 officers. One officer moved on last week because this County has decided that already over taxed officers, should now have to work a 24 hour shift for 7 days each month. 4 officers, each one works their regular 40 hour shift, then will be required to be on-call for Law Enforcement Emergencies. That means, working 24 hours a day for 7 days of their work week. 

According to Census.Gov There are more than 200K housing units in Clark County. 200k. Of those, roughly 90% of those units, have animals. Whether it is domestic pets, or livestock, farm animals, exotics, or otherwise.

It is statistically impossible for 4 officers to manage. Even more impossible when you tell them that not only will they spend every work day being degraded by the public because they cannot respond, cannot respond soon enough, don't respond because they have no staff or resources, or just plain because there is a lack of faith in their ability to respond -- thanks to the lack of funding and support from our County Manager(s) over the years, and her Community Development Director. 

Meaningful change needs to happen, and swiftly. It is time to hold our County Council to their elected positions and DEMAND change. The Clark County Council "Appoints" the County Manager. The County Council can make the change. The County Manager, hires the Community Development Manager. Replacing a County Manager, could result in a replacement of a Community Development Manager. The Clark County Prosecutor, needs to PROSECUTE, and learn how to prosecute animal cruelty cases. If the Prosecutor's office does not want to prosecute, we need to elect a new prosecutor who will.

If these managers do not want to participate in keeping our pets, livestock, farm animals, safe in this community, we need to exercise our right to demand change. 

If we don't do something now, we are going to end up in a place where you see your neighbors starving their cattle to death, and you have to watch and do nothing because we do not have the resources to prosecute. You will find an increase in animal dumping, killing, cruelty, neglect, because there is no consequence. Crimes against humans are the next step after crime against an animal. Study after Study after Study proves this.

We need our County Councilors to know that we demand change. We want to see a focus on funding the Clark County Animal Control department! We need 10 officers, but will accept a ramp up to that number.

Our Request:

2 new officers are starting in February, giving the department 4 total officers and one Mgr/Officer. We want to see 6 officers by May(not including the Mgr/Officer), 7 by July (the busy season), 8 By December 2023, and 10 by May 2024. It is a reasonable request.

Link to our County Councilors is below.

Contact your Councilor

 You can check which district represents you on the County page as well here:

District Map

Please sign this petition and help us, help the animals in our community!