CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — In an effort to be more transparent about operations, the city's animal care advisory committee has talked about potentially releasing an internal tool that is used by animal control to help officers be more efficient when going out to service calls.
The tool is called a 'GIS', which stands for 'Geographic Information System,' and what's being discussed are the benefits of making that tool public.
Senior Management Analyst for Corpus Christi Animal Care Services, Dave Parrott said if this tool were made public, it would be an eye-opening experience for everyone.
"There is a mantra out there, even on Facebook and social media that we don't do anything," he said. "They call, they call, they call, we never go out. And unfortunately that's probably the case sometimes, but usually by the time we get to the call, the call might not need to be serviced anymore."
At the time of this interview Dave Parrott showed 3NEWS that there were over 3,000 dispatched calls, while there are only 17 officers on the force.
"But then again, not all 17 officers are here every day," Parrott said. "Because we have people who are sick, training, taking time off."
Parrott said his officers are overworked. The GIS map allows the user to zoom in and target a specific location based on the number of calls in that area.
"I'd be able to go in here and put all these calls into my own officer box and I could knock out all these calls vice focusing on the priority 1 calls," he said.
Parrott said priority matters. Aggressive attacks are going to outweigh stray calls.
"If you get a dispatcher to say an injured call, but there's other calls within that same, or even that same address, they can actually put all those calls in the officer box and they can cancel them out with one call," he said.
Jackie McCullough is on the city's animal care advisory committee. She spoke with 3NEWS and said, "When someone calls in about a stray animal, but the stray animal isn't injured, isn't in danger, and isn't aggressive, unfortunately it goes to the bottom of the list.
McCullough explained, "it's not because they don't care, it's not that they don't want to pick it up, but there's just too many urgent calls."
She feels releasing the GIS map will be beneficial to the community.
"The people that really care about getting that animal the help that they're calling about or whatever the issue is, they're going to be able to see for themselves instead of from someone else, what the reality is," McCullough said.
Due to the GIS map releasing sensitive information like addresses, animal care services said they are working with attorneys to determine if this map is something that can be released to the public.
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