Kansas City to officially take back animal control at end of July, officials say
Kansas City officials announced Tuesday that the city will take over animal control services starting July 30, nearly four months after the City Council voted unanimously to take back control from KC Pet Project.
The city’s Neighborhood Services Department will oversee operations through the new Animal Services Division, according to a news release. Residents will be able to continue calling 311 to report animal problems, but will now also be able to report issues through the city’s myKCMO app or website.
Kansas City’s animal control will work out of the City’s Campus for Animal Care in Swope Park. They are actively hiring officers and dispatchers, according to the release, to be more reliable and efficient. They’re also hiring someone to lead public education and outreach.
KC Pet Project, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, will continue to manage the city’s animal shelter in Swope Park, which it has done since 2012.
“This transition enables KC Pet Project to shift our resources to focus on our core mission to create a compassionate community for pets and people,” said Kate Meghji, KC Pet Project’s Chief Executive Officer in a release. “We look forward to building on KC Pet Project’s national reputation as an innovative leader in animal welfare by expanding our lifesaving programs and community support services to keep pets and people together.”
KC Pet Project’s animal control issues
The change comes following multiple reports about KC Pet Project’s troubles operating the city’s animal control, which came to a head after Kansas City resident Chris Culbertson was killed by a pack of dogs last fall.
KC Pet Project faced criticism for not acting sooner to prevent the attack, despite heavily monitoring the area due to frequent complaints about other dogs, and for failing to immediately confiscate the five pit bulls involved in Culbertson’s death, as required by city ordinance.
Over five months following the attack, The Star submitted numerous records requests to the city and KC Pet Project asking for more information on what happened that night.
Those documents, once released, showed that despite the presence of a SWAT team, K-9 officers and KC Pet Project officers, officials were unable to take control of the dogs.
And although city ordinance allows officers to destroy dangerous dogs that pose a public threat, officers instead left the dogs in the fenced-in yard of their owner, according to the documents. A patrol schedule was created to keep an eye out for them, but it didn’t start until four days later.
The weekend after the patrol was initiated, several dogs matching the description of those involved in the attack were located roughly 2 miles from owner John Thibeaux’s property, seemingly dumped, according to court documents. They were subsequently impounded and euthanized, including one quarantined dog, according to KC Pet Project.
According to Kansas City’s municipal code on impounding a dog who has bitten someone, the dog — if already deemed dangerous through the court process — should be immediately impounded and euthanized humanely. If the animal is deemed uncatchable, officials may kill the animal by other reasonable means if they continue to be a threat to people or domestic animals. According to the municipal code, tranquilizers can be used as a means of capture.
It is not clear, though, what the protocol is immediately following an attack like the Culbertson one, where dogs severely injure a person but have not been designated as dangerous by the courts.
Both John Thibeaux Sr. and John Thibeaux Jr. were charged in April for allegedly causing the death of Chris Culbertson and serious physical injury “by owning or harboring dogs, known by the defendants to be aggressive, and failing to adequately control said dogs,” according to charging documents.
According to a press release from the prosecutor’s office, the younger Thibeaux ran a dog breeding business and advertised puppies for $200 on social media. An animal control officer found nine puppies at his house the day after the arrest, according to charging documents.
A trial date has been set for July 2026.
But even before Culbertson’s death, critics had been vocal about how, too often, KC Pet Project was unresponsive when people called for assistance with dangerous dogs and about pets who were malnourished or mistreated.
When their animal control contract came up for renewal early last year, the city put out a bid for someone else to take over animal control after getting over 200 complaints during the previous fiscal year, according to Forest Decker, director of the city’s Neighborhood Services Department.
But when questioned in March, KC Pet Project told The Star that transferring power back to the city wouldn’t make much of a difference without making significant changes to the ordinance that outlines animal control enforcement, which they claimed didn’t give them the power to be effective.
