Confusion created when cops collar dog walker

When police arrest woman on a warrant, the canines she cares for wind up in the shelter

McCormick's dog walker, Kristin Leone of the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, D.C., usually brings Nesta home before 7 p.m., when McCormick gets back from work. But on Aug. 18, no Nesta and no Leone.

After a series of panicked calls, including some unsuccessful ones to Leone, McCormick learned that Nesta was at the Montgomery County Animal Shelter in Rockville. So she drove there immediately.

Night staffers told her she was too late to pick up the dog. Shelter policy states animals cannot be released after 6:30 p.m. So McCormick went back the next day to pick up Nesta. But, she said, the dog wasn't the same.

"The dog was freaked, totally freaked," said McCormick, adding that the ordeal might have aggravated 9-year-old Nesta's chronic neck problems. And, she said, he hadn't urinated since being impounded because "he will not urinate in a building or on any surface other than the earth."

McCormick later learned that her dog walker, Leone, had been arrested Aug. 18 while walking Nesta and other dogs on her route. That arrest resulted in some worried dog owners, a letter to McCormick from Takoma Park Police and a changed policy at the county shelter.

On Aug. 18, Leone was driving her afternoon clients to a park near Wildwood Drive and Anne Street in Takoma Park when she ran a stop sign at 2:19 p.m. Takoma Park Police pulled her over. She expected to pay a fine, but didn't expect an arrest warrant out in her name.

The warrant, she said, resulted from several traffic violations and admittedly absent-minded responses dating back to 2000 that eventually led to a suspended license for not appearing in court.

"I'm not some kind of derelict, I just don't read all of my mail," joked Leone, 28. "If you want to tell me I have a suspended license, then you should call my phone or text."

What followed the arrest amounted to more than a routine traffic stop for police. Leone was taken to the county jail in Rockville, and an officer had to wait at the scene for county police Animal Control Division and a tow truck.

Leone's cell phone had been at McCormick's house and contact information for her clients was unavailable. She would eventually be released around 10 p.m. but was unable to contact her clients before then.

The other four clients were able to retrieve their dogs before the shelter closed that afternoon, Leone said.

As a result of the confusion with Nesta and McCormick, the night dispatcher at the shelter is now required to call humane society management, who can then allow permission for the dog to be released if the customer has provided proof of ownership.

"Whether its 11 p.m. or 11 a.m., we love it when we can reunite a dog with its owners, but in this situation we did not get imaginative enough," said Nicholas Gilman, interim executive director of the Montgomery Humane Society. "There are always ways to improve customer service."

McCormick said the police department mishandled the situation by not allowing Leone to locate the owners' phone numbers and then go to jail.

"It's not like she a murderer," said McCormick, a lawyer. "I get hundreds of people telling me on a daily basis, my car got broken into, there's a shooting, and I'm thinking, Takoma Park doesn't have anything better to do on a Monday afternoon?"

Takoma Park Chief of Police Ronald A. Ricucci said his officers followed protocol for caring for the pets affected by arrests, although this situation was unusual

"We don't arrest dog walkers every day," he said.

He said officers would have contacted the dogs' owners if the phone numbers were provided and that police must honor an arrest warrant regardless of the situation.

In a letter to McCormick and Nesta's other owner, Stevan Lieberman, Ricucci suggested the problem could have been avoided if Leone had been "better prepared to handle emergency occurrences."

As for Leone, she hopes her traffic violations and license issues are finally settled now that she knows how important she is to her canine clients.

"Someone can't just drop off the face of the Earth and not have someone else affected," she said.