City hires animal control/code enforcement officer

The City of Barnwell hired former Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) deputy Andrew Thompson to fill the position of code enforcement/animal control officer after it had remained vacant for nearly a year.

Thompson began serving as the Barnwell Police Department (BPD) code enforcement officer, which the duty of animal control falls under, the week of November 30, 2022.

The position was approved at the July 26 Barnwell City Council meeting after Rose Hartzog was brutally attacked by dogs running at large.

Thompson finds this position with BPD to be a “change of pace” that he is looking forward to.

“Having someone available to take animal calls when needed is a big plus,” said Thompson.

He hopes to “do what the community needs as far as stray animals, and take care of complaints,” said Thompson.

Thompson will be handling animal complaints as well as code enforcement. While animal complaint calls make up a portion of those received by dispatch, the total call volume covers a variety of matters.

Thompson’s position was created to allow the officer to handle both animal-related calls and any others pertaining to code enforcement in the city.

“When it comes to animal control, we’re all on a learning curve,” said BPD Chief Lamaz Robinson.

With Thompson’s addition to the BPD, comes an effort to create a system to track animal-related offenders.

“Right now, we don’t really have a tracking system in place,” said Chief Robinson. “We have to go by somebody digging through all these reports.”

Currently, the BPD has no way of tracking habitual offenders whose dogs are continually the source of complaint calls.

“With Andrew, we’re going to try and establish something, even if it's a binder in alphabetical order, we’re going to have to come up with some type of tracking system so we can better track incidents,” said Chief Robinson.

“We need a better way to manage these incidents,” said Chief Robinson.

The dogs who attacked Hartzog were reported to BPD over ten times before they were trapped after the incident. Current city ordinances allow for three incidents to occur with an animal(s) before repercussions are taken on the owner. Repercussions can happen in the form of a citation.

However, city ordinances are currently being revised after Barnwell County Council restructured their animal control ordinances.

“We’re trying to get remotely close to it so there is no confusion in the laws,” said Chief Robinson. “The city is still in the process of redoing their animal ordinances.”

“We are working on them and will get something out within the next month or so,” said City Administrator Lynn McEwen.

With updated ordinances, Chief Robinson and Officer Thompson will still consider the many other factors that consist of animal control.

“When we talk about the totality of the circumstances, we can't just go get these animals without considering the shelter staff, shelter conditions, and improvement,” said Chief Robinson, who hopes all aspects of animal control improve in years to come.

Although hiring an officer to handle animal control will not alleviate all of the issues animals face in the City of Barnwell, it demonstrates a start.