"Well, today is Friday, and the dog started its barking session at 4:31 a.m., stopped after about a half hour, then started again at about 6 when its owners and kids were getting ready to go out. That lasted till about 7:15 p.m."
Harold Krieg says he's the kind of sleeper who, when awakened, can't return to slumber even if he's dog-tired. Lately, he claims, he's been doggy-dog-tired. The culprit is an innocent-looking German Shepherd, visible through a back window of his home on Paul Avenue. Krieg says the pooch barks the same way an auctioneer talks: loud, maddening, in a relentless stream of flow. Yaps so much that he can't get a decent night's shut-eye. So often and so sporadically that Krieg is now in a barking match with city animal control officials he claims have taken a paws-off approach.
"I've been trying to handle this the proper way but animal control has been nonresponsive," he says, retrieving a small set of papers from the computer room. The top page has a sampling of days and times he's called animal control:
4/24, midnight.
4/25, 11:45 p.m.
4/26, 7:21 a.m.
4/26, 3:31 p.m.
4/26, 4:33 p.m.
Another paper chronicles the duration of the barking:
5/17, 6:30 a.m., 30 minutes.
5/18, 7:15 a.m., 45 minutes.
5/22, 1:30 a.m., 75 minutes.
6/1, 4:45 a.m., 50 minutes.
6/4, 2:05 a.m., 70 minutes.
"I would never poison an animal or put pins in the food (as happened in other instances)," Krieg says, "but I want the pet owner and animal control to take responsibility."
"The owner of a dog that barks excessively, or any noisy animal, may be criminally prosecuted if the problem is not corrected. If talking with the owner has not solved the problem, contact Animal Control. Please provide an exact address. On the first complaint, Animal Control will send a letter to the owner. On the second complaint, an officer will be sent to the owner's home and issue a written notice of correction. After the third complaint within six months, you will be asked to provide a written voluntary statement detailing the complaint, including, but not necessarily limited to, documenting dates, times and duration of the excessive noise. Your statement must be corroborated by at least one additional person who lives in the neighborhood. All persons submitting a written statement must be willing to appear in court."
Las Vegas Animal Control Supervisor Roger Van Oordt says Krieg is barking up the wrong legal tree, particularly by pressing for criminal charges. "It's very hard for a criminal court to handle a case without corroboration," he says.
Krieg has been given all the necessary complaint forms, Van Oordt claims, but has either failed to complete them or has muddled them up with non sequitur-ish laments.
"All sorts of weird stuff in there that we couldn't present to the court," Van Oordt says, declining to elaborate.
"He just won't follow procedure. We've sent a letter out to the owner. We've sent an officer out to talk to the animal owner. We had officers park down the street and didn't hear the dog barking. Statements need to be corroborated by another neighbor and they haven't. We tried to substantiate the complaint with neighbors, at least eight neighbors, but they said there was no problem."
"If you know of an attorney, or someone from the A.C.L.U., (American Civil Liberties Union) that would be willing to represent me in a civil lawsuit against Animal Control, Las Vegas Detention and Enforcement Department, Senior Animal Control Officer Richard Molinari, Animal Control Supervisor Roger Van Oordt, and the City of Las Vegas, regarding this matter, would you be so kind as to let me know."
Say one thing for Krieg, he's persistent with a capital Persistent.
In the days before and after the interview, he called and e-mailed the Weekly more than a half-dozen times about the barking dog, about the Los Angeles drug arrest of a man with the same name as a former neighbor, about another animal control officer coming to his home to investigate, about taking the issue, if need be, to the federal justice department. Said aggressiveness hasn't endeared him to animal control officials who he claims, on orders from Van Oordt, stopped accepting his calls and refused to conduct an additional "park and bark," parking around the block and listening for yowls. When senior animal control officer Richard Molinari did visit, Krieg says he never queried neighbors about the yelping pooch.
Van Oordt denies that Krieg was blacklisted from making complaints:
"I never told people in the office not to take his call. But what I'm not going to do to is keep sending people out there when he has no evidence [animal control gets thousands of calls annually about noisy dogs].
"Mr. Krieg has other options: He can take this to the (county's) Neighborhood Justice Center or he can file a civil suit, where there's less burden of proof. (Without evidence) we can't help the man and he's certainly not helping himself."
Saturday, October 15
"Just to keep you updated, Wednesday October 12, 2005, about 2 p.m. an animal control female officer came over to speak with me, regarding the dog barking. As she and I were speaking by the front door, the dog started barking. Nothing was done. Still the dog barks."