EX-CON ACADEMY FOR PIT BULLS DELAYED WHAT IF REHABBED DOGS TURN VIOLENT, COUNCIL WONDERS.

Byline: KERRY CAVANAUGH

Staff Writer

The Los Angeles City Council postponed plans Friday to open an academy for parolees to rehabilitate abused pit bulls after hearing concerns about logistics and potential city liability.

The first-of-its-kind program was supposed to kick off today at a South Los Angeles animal shelter, but that has been delayed at least two weeks.

Council members said they support the concept, which would provide jobs for ex-cons and a second chance for pit bulls that might otherwise be euthanized. But they questioned whether the city could be sued if one of the rehabbed dogs bit someone.

"If he ends up being a bad dog, who is responsible?" Councilwoman Janice Hahn asked.

The council also questioned whether Animal Services General Manager Ed Boks followed civil-service rules when he hired eight employees affiliated with a nonprofit rescue center at a cost of $129,000 for six months for the academy.

"You have put the council in an awkward position," Councilman Richard Alarcon said. "We want to encourage programs like this. To change not only the behavior of animals, but to change, more importantly, human behavior, to reduce the recidivism rate is a great thing.

"But we don't want to do it in the face of a system we manage, the civil service system."

Boks said he believed he followed city rules in developing the pit bull training academy.

"We were very, very careful to do everything by the book," he said. "We were not trying to slip this by anybody. We thought this would be a program the city would support."

Inspired last year by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's call for general managers to develop creative solutions to city problems, Boks came up with the idea of partnering with the Villalobos Rescue Center in Canyon Country, which trains parolees to rehabilitate aggressive or abused pit bulls. The trained dogs could then be adopted out.

Pit bulls and pit-bull mixes make up 25 percent of the dogs taken into the city's animal shelter, but the breed accounts for 41 percent of all euthanized dogs.

"It's abundantly clear that we cannot pretend to aspire to a no-kill (city) if we don't try harder to reduce that killed pit bull rate," Boks said.

But some animal advocates worried that some pit bulls, bred to be aggressive, cannot be reformed and will still pose a risk.

And the union that represents city employees questioned whether the program is really the best use of city dollars.

"Is being the first U.S. city to have a pit bull academy really a good idea?" asked Julie Butcher, regional director for the Service Employees International Union, Local 721.

"Maybe every other large American city has seen fit to use its limited resources otherwise," she said.

But parolees who have been working with the Villalobos Rescue Center said the program is an important second chance for workers and for pit bulls.

"This job is really important to me," said Donovon Taylor, 37, of Lancaster. "I've made some mistakes in my life and I'm trying to do the best I can to make up for those mistakes.<NO><NO1>What this means to me is that I can have a good, honest, hard-working job that I can be proud of."

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

[phone]