Leading the field

So many of us get our news via social media these days.  And I was pleasantly surprised to see a post with such good news on Facebook recently.  My colleague Scott Giacoppo had been elected president of the National Animal Control Association (NACA)!

Wow—how cool is that, I thought.  NACA is a well-known and highly respected organization for those professionals working in animal care and control, and Scott has been active in what he calls “an evolving field” for a long time.

“I’m a firm believer that the animal care and control field is an honorable profession,” Scott told me.  Agreed 100%.  It goes without saying.

I’d never been a NACA member myself during my career in animal welfare.  Nor had I been to any of its conferences.  But I know what a prominent and guiding role the association plays in a field that sometimes doesn’t get all the respect it deserves for all the good that animal control officers (ACOs) bring to communities and all the risk and danger that ACOs face and experience.  Some have even been killed while performing their duties.

I first got to know Scott many years ago in his role at the Washington (DC) Humane Society and was pleased to see he now had a new role as Director of National Shelter Outreach for Best Friends Animal Society.  In this role, he provides, according to the Best Friends website, “leadership and hands-on training for strategic shelter partners; conducts professional shelter operations and field assessments; and leads progressive, humane trainings for animal control agencies and officers.”  Now 53 years old, Scott lives in Nashville with four cats, who are all brothers born on the street.

Prior to his current position, he was Chief of Animal Field Services for the District of Columbia for ten years.  Before that, Scott worked in Boston for more than a decade at the Massachusetts SPCA as the Special State Police Officer for Cruelty Investigations.  He received awards and recognition for work with dangerous dogs, street gangs, community policing education, and the investigation and prosecution of precedent-setting animal fighting cases. 

No doubt, a most impressive background.  And highly appropriate for NACA, for which he was just re-elected to his second three-year term as a board member—as well as his first one-year term as its president.  He has been a member of the organization, founded in 1978, for a decade. 

One doesn’t want come across someone holding the post of president every day so I was curious to know what Scott has on the agenda for his peers.

He deemed NACA’s primary focus to be educating members so they can do their job better by benefitting from successful strategies and tactics pioneered by their colleagues.

“Our job,” professed Scott, “is to show them what others are doing that is working—reducing call volume, increasing public safety, solving animal-related problems in the community, increasing the image of animal control and reducing euthanasia—and not only show them what is being done, but show them how they too can do it.”

“That’s what being a member of NACA is all about: unity, being a part of something bigger than yourself, [and]…being able to learn from and teach others all over the country,” he said.

He reported that NACA will continue to drive the enormous change of animal control from “being heavily enforcement-driven to being more of problem solvers in the community.”

Scott pointed to ACOs wanting to change behavior as an ultimate goal, and that impounding animals and issuing citations is not always the best way to change behavior.  In most cases, he believes, enforcement is not the best course of action.  He said some animal control agencies are starting to focus on avoiding repeat calls by assisting people with problems that lead to frequent issues with their animals. 

For example, some ACOs nationwide are now helping people fix fences to prevent their animals from escaping and roaming.  He mentioned agencies including Pima County, Arizona and Caddo Parish, Louisiana now have trucks stocked with fence repair equipment.  They have, according to Scott, been posting stories about their problem-solving efforts and receiving strong support from their communities.

Impounding animals, he explained, typically results in offenders simply acquiring another animal and the problem behavior repeating. 

“Officers around the country know this to be the case,” said Scott.  “We’ve all been to the same house for the same problem over and over again.  We need to find ways of stopping that cycle and solving the problem once and for all.”

As president, he also wants “every ACO in the country getting the training they deserve.”  This includes courses on not only officer safety, but also compassion fatigue, a term for burn-out resulting from repeatedly giving on an emotional level—especially in the face of sad, tragic circumstances that ACOs and similar professions must grapple with on a daily basis. 

Increased training opportunities is a chief NACA priority.  There is no national education standard for ACOs and some practitioners receive no training at all.  NACA offers full certification programs and Scott is advocating for courses on supervision and leadership to help prepare officers for career advancement.  The NACA board is also looking at additional ways that technology can help ACOs and the animals whom they assist.

I asked about the controversial issues with which NACA now wrestles and where the field is moving on them.  Topping the list is trap-neuter-return (TNR), which NACA officially supports because the organization recognizes that trapping and removing has not reduced numbers in outdoor cat populations. Moreover, removing cats also exacerbated public resentment towards animal control.  

“I firmly believe in TNR and believe it solves the issues of too many cats and, if done right, reduces nuisance complaints,” he noted.  “More and more ACOs are getting on board but it’s still not a standard practice yet, like removal once was.  It’s a controversial issue for animal control, city governments and animal lovers in general.”

“The next issue I see on the horizon is dog licensing,” said Scott.  “I’m opposed to it.  I think it is an outdated model that costs more than it brings in.” 

Many municipalities have found that licensing costs taxpayers more money than it raises, according to him.  He cited Albuquerque, New Mexico instead requiring microchipping with lifetime registration as opposed to an annual license fee.  NACA, Scott noted, continues to officially support licensing programs but he hopes to encourage conversations among ACOs about whether this endorsement should be amended or abandoned.

I know from my own experience that sometimes ACOs and shelter personnel can disagree on hot-button policy subjects like no-kill rhetoric, shelter intake and euthanasia.  I asked Scott about this occasional longtime conflict and he says that he continually seeks to build bridges with colleagues at humane societies and SPCAs.

“We are all trying to achieve the same goal.  As long as we all put the work into saving healthy adoptable animals, then nothing else matters.  No one wants to put dangerous dogs back into the community or allow animals to languish away in a shelter,” he explained.  “We have more in common than not and that’s what we need to focus on.”

Best wishes to you, Mr. President, as you and everyone at NACA seeks to help more animals in need.