Nethermead Follow-Up

We reported the other day that 61 unleashed dogs were observed on the Nethermead around 5 P.M. Per our instructions, our observer filed a complaint with 311, left his email address and got a complaint number. We followed up the complaint on the City’s 311 website, http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/threeoneone, and this is what we found:

SERVICE REQUEST #: 1-1-398537162

CREATED ON: 05/15/2008 5:39:42 PM

REQUEST TYPE: Animal in a Park

DETAIL: Dog Off Leash

INCIDENT BOROUGH: BROOKLYN

STATUS: No action was taken because the agency determined the condition reported was within acceptable parameters for park/city use.

NOTES TO CUSTOMER: Cannot address condition unless currently in progress....dp

LAST UPDATED ON: 05/15/2008 5:54:04 PM

NEXT UPDATE DUE: Closed - No Further Updates

DID YOU KNOW? For more information about this type of request or the agency that handles these issues, click on the link below.
Learn More

The link sends you to the DOPR’s dog information site.

So:

1. “Dogs off leash” at 5:39:42 P.M. are “within acceptable parameters for park/city use.” So someone at the DOPR has determined that it’s perfectly OK to run your dogs at 5:39 P.M. in a park even though, under the DOPR’s own regulations, off-leash hours don’t start until 9 P.M.

2. “Cannot address condition unless currently in progress”. (We don't know what "dp" is.) The 311 operator routes the complaint to the DOPR for future, not immediate, action, and so if the DOPR ever got around to “address condition”, it couldn’t possibly still be “currently in progress”; and besides, the DOPR couldn’t possibly do anything at that hour because (so far as we know) it has no PEP agents on duty then. Although we haven’t tried calling 911, there’s little doubt that if we told the simple truth—dogs are running around illegally unleashed, and we don’t see them hurting anyone because anyone who’s likely to be hurt has fled—the 911 operator would tell us to call 311.

The email our observer got explained how to upload videos and still pictures to 311. We intend to do that next.

Getting brave, we decided to follow up on our May 4 complaint, reported earlier, of dogs on the Nethermead. This is what we found:

SERVICE REQUEST #: 1-1-396177716

CREATED ON: 05/04/2008 5:24:09 PM

REQUEST TYPE: Animal in a Park

DETAIL: Dog Off Leash

INCIDENT BOROUGH: BROOKLYN

STATUS: The Department of Parks and Recreation usually requires 14 days to respond to this type of complaint. Please note your Service Request number for future reference.

NEXT UPDATE DUE: Past Due

Stay tuned.

Prospect Park, around 7:50 A.M. As usual, a couple of (white) dog owners unleashed their dogs on Wellhouse Drive and let them run the rest of the way to the Peninsula dog run. We didn’t hang around.