Death row smells like dog piss. The inmates, five pit bull terriers, have fouled their cells. Repeatedly. They're yowling in indignation. They're pounding and banging on their cell walls and doors.
For all intents and purposes, the pits -- Brownie, Cassius, Rock, Ice, and Ralph -- have ceased to be sentient beings. They're merely evidence to be presented in court cases against their former owners. As soon as the cases are done -- so are they.
Dead dog walking. The icy needle. The big sleep.
Refuse of a disgusting and dangerous subculture of nihilism, machismo, and, often, hard drugs and violent crime, these dogs will round out their short lives in the cages of the city's Animal Care and Control agency. They've been handed a death sentence because they were confiscated at dogfights, or have the telltale scars of organized fighting. Once a pit learns the blood sport it was bred for, it can't unlearn. It's no good for anything else. It has to die.
The first cage on the left houses Brownie, a monster of a dog, a classic pit: bulging muscles packed around the shoulders and head, a head that is shockingly large. The dog's head reaches nearly as high as an average person's waist. Standing next to Brownie when he's outside the cage is, plainly said, terrifying.
His head is all jaw and mouth. Toss a ball to Brownie, and his oddly quiet powerhouse clampdown makes you take a step back.
The sound of that clamping-down terrifies in the same way the tiny click of a bullet clip slipping into a gun does. The clampdown reminds you that every pit, no matter how sweet, is very much like a loaded gun. The clampdown announces: You can't unlock these jaws with human hands. You need a device called a break-stick.
Right now Brownie is in his cage employing his canine skills on a red chew toy. Grasping it between his teeth, Brownie shakes the toy violently back and forth. The body tremor starts in the head and spreads back through the body to the hindquarters, surging like 10,000 volts, ripping through his body, sending it crashing from wall to wall. Water and dog food dishes fly. Accompanied by a steady, lethal growl, the momentum builds until the whole cage is one violent, crashing cacophony of killer instinct.
"He wishes that chew toy was this dog," says Animal Control attendant Katie Dinneen, wryly pointing to a 1-year-old pit named Fred that she's walking past the cages on death row.
Fred, black-and-white spotted and little more than a puppy, is jumping up and down, playfully, blissfully unaware that the dog in the cage wants to eat him.
Fred isn't all pit. He's probably one-third something else. He's cute, no question, and obviously full of typical puppy energy. Dinneen and her superiors at Animal Care and Control want to see if he passes a new "temperament test" the agency has developed and is continuing to refine. The test will determine whether cute little Fred lives or, deemed a menace to society, dies.
Seven months ago, all pits, regardless of whether they were sullen or sweet, were euthanized once they had the bad luck to be surrendered by owners or were picked up by officers investigating cruelty, dogfighting, or other violations of animal control laws.
But after contentious internal debate, Animal Care and Control changed its policy. Now agency staffers pick and choose, based on a still-evolving set of behavioral standards, which pits are suitable for adoption, and which have to be "put down."
So far, Fred seems to be doing all the right things.
He's a little mouthy, meaning he bites in play way too often. But when he bites Dinneen too hard and she yells in pain, Fred jumps back, drops his ears and tail in regret, and stands still, the picture of dejection.
"That's good, very good," says Lori Feazell, the deputy director of Animal Control, who has just walked into the "get-acquainted room" to watch Fred take the agency's life-and-death exam.
Dinneen sits on a bench in the room and calls Fred. He comes to her; she restrains him, placing her arms around his neck and body, rendering him unable to move. He wriggles up on her lap and licks her face.
Good move, Fred.
Dinneen lets Fred loose and claps her hands real hard when Fred has his back turned. He flinches a little but mostly ignores her.
Fred passes a few other little tests and then goes on to face the ultimate magistrate, the Pontius Pilate of pit bull terriers, the grand arbiter of life and death in the corridors of Animal Care and Control: Feazell's dog, Colby, an Australian shepherd mix.
Dinneen and another officer block off one end of the corridor, where Feazell keeps her office. Feazell blocks off the other end and releases Colby.
Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
The sound of slippery paws scampering on linoleum announces Colby. He makes a beeline for Fred. The two dogs do the usual sniff-sniff, let's-get-acquainted nuzzling, and then Colby sets to it. He nips and charges and nudges and mounts. Fred isn't having fun. He's scared of Colby. He wants no part of Colby.
Colby charges again. Fred whimpers and makes a run for it, trying to squeeze between Dinneen's legs.
He's exhibited no innate pit bull fighting tendencies. In fact, he's a bit of a sissy.
"He'll go up to the SPCA tomorrow for adoption," Feazell says.
The new pit bull policy has everyone at Animal Care and Control holding breath. "I'll be the first to admit, it's a very risky program," Feazell says. "It's a challenged program. We don't know the full history of a lot of these dogs."
Truth be told, there is only one official who wanted to change the policy of killing all pit bulls that came into public custody. That official was Carl Friedman, the agency's avuncular, rumpled executive director.
Friedman is the kind of guy who will, even though he has far too many chores to complete in any given day, stop in the lobby of Animal Care and Control to discuss, in detail, the condition of a wounded bird.
"You did the right thing," Friedman says to the boy who brought in the bird, cuffing him on the head, before going off to a meeting.
Last year, as Friedman stared into the eyes of three helpless pit pups on death row, something inside him snapped. For months, he had been increasingly uncomfortable whenever he tried to justify his agency's policy of pit bull genocide. Even though they had been owned by a family known for dogfighting, when those three pups came in, Friedman just couldn't do it anymore.
The old softie had a hell of a time convincing his staff that some pit bulls deserved to live.
His deputy, Feazell, is 110 percent cop. She's all about catching bad guys and making them pay. Bad guys fight pit bulls; making them pay includes seizing and then killing their dogs.
Friedman's investigative chief, Capt. Vicki Guldbech, holds the same beliefs. Guldbech likes few things better than staring down a pit-bull fighter, letting him know, in absolutely certain terms, that she is about to make his life hellish. Guldbech cusses and uses phrases like "a tall drink of water" to describe suspects.
Guldbech and Feazell had such strong objections to pit bull rehabilitation that Friedman -- whom they consider not just a boss, but a friend -- almost had to order them to comply with the rescue program.
The objections were not unreasonable: Pits are like no other dogs.
First, there is the matter of sheer physical power. It's not hyperbolic to think of pit bulls as sharks with paws. Once a pit attacks, the only useful response is overwhelming force. A pit bull attacked police horses last month in Golden Gate Park, and the officers had one choice: shoot to kill. If you don't have a break-stick when a pit bull latches on, you're most likely mauled. Or dead.
Then, there's the mental aspect. Deep in its mind, Feazell believes, every pit contains a trigger that no other dog possesses. If the trigger is pulled, the dog turns into a killer.
And no one at Animal Care and Control or anywhere else can change the hair-trigger nature of the dog.
Through its experimental form of temperament testing, Animal Care and Control is trying to change the dogs' environment -- that is, their owners. The new program takes pit bulls from the thugs and losers who slather over blood sport and turns the dogs over to honorable human beings. The agency isn't, therefore, trying to change the breed of dog; it's attempting to radically alter the breed of dog owners.
It's a somewhat heroic effort, and one you come to appreciate if you've ever cuddled with a pit pup who's all tongue and love. But there's an awful truth hanging over the program: If at any point one of the adopted pits falls into the wrong hands, if by hook or crook a gangbanger or dogfighter gets hold of one of the newly adopted pits, violence or death could occur. And, statistics suggest, the victim likely as not will be a child.
The responsibility for releasing a pit bull was so awesome that Friedman had to assure his officers and fellow administrators he would accept complete legal and moral responsibility if anything ever went wrong.
So far, all of the pits and pit mixes adopted through the Animal Care and Control program -- all 70 of them -- are in good homes and haven't hurt a soul.
So far.
Once a pit passes the Animal Control temperament test, it usually is sent to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which places the vast majority of pits adopted in San Francisco. (Some are adopted directly through Animal Control, but limited space forces the agency to send most pits to the SPCA.)
Both the city agency and the nonprofit society put potential pit-bull "parents" through the ringer. The pit fancier has to ask permission from neighbors to own the breed. Current and former employers are called. Three references, minimum, are required. Criminal records are checked. Obedience classes are mandatory. An SPCA official or Animal Control officer visits the home and checks to see if fences are high enough to prevent escape or theft, if the house is clean enough, if there is evidence of interest in dogfighting. (No one said dogfighters were smart; recently, a home visit found dogfighting magazines strewn around one prospective pit-bull adopter's home.)
If an adopter passes his temperament test, he is fingerprinted and photographed with the new pit bull, into which a microchip is then inserted. The chip contains the owner's name, address, and phone number and is hot-wired to a national database on pit bulls and their owners.
The chances that a pit bull will reach the microchip-and-photo-session stage are not good. The overwhelming majority of pits don't even get to take the Animal Control temperament test.
If a dog has scars, it dies. If it's found at a fight, or with other dogs known to be fighters, it dies. The process is unforgiving. It has to be.
Each week, Animal Care and Control receives at least five new pit bulls. At any given time, at least half the dogs in Animal Control kennels, waiting for the needle or the test, are pit bulls. Several hundred American pit bull terriers are destroyed here each month.
The first question asked about a stray pit bull when it lands at Animal Control is, "Where was it picked up?" If the dog comes in from an area known for dogfighting -- if it comes from the Valencia Gardens housing projects at 15th and Valencia streets, for example -- there is a huge strike against it.
If the dog comes from a certain neighborhood in the far Outer Sunset, it will almost certainly die.
The neighborhood of single-family homes and surfer shanties surrounding the corner of 46th Avenue and Judah, near Ocean Beach, where the N Judah line ends and the Pacific Ocean begins, is home to a group of young drug dealers and pit-bull fighters who call themselves the 46th Avenue Mob. Or Forty-Sixers, for short. " 'Pho-Sixers' is how they pronounce it," says Judy McGaffey, whose cat was eaten by a Forty-Sixer pit bull last year.
McGaffey, a marketing executive and all-around dog person, is an animal lover amid animal abusers. She's a top-notch human among low-rent jerks.
Last year, a family nearby moved out of the neighborhood and decided to simply leave their dogs and cats behind. There were about 10 felines.
One of them, Orph, a slip of a cat stunted by too many early pregnancies, inexplicably took to McGaffey. McGaffey would always say "hi" to Orph -- short for Orphan -- when she'd pass her in the street.
"She'd nuzzle my nose with her nose," McGaffey says. "The neighbors would see us and say it's true love."
Pretty soon, McGaffey was leaving her garage door open a crack, so Orph could find refuge. Orph's siblings, Patches and Boots, came along. Then, McGaffey began leaving food on the driveway. Shortly thereafter, she made up cat beds and moved the dishes into the house.
A few months later, Patches had kittens in the house where she used to live, and, with fierce motherly pride, carried them three at a time over several backyard fences until they were safely ensconced in an open suitcase in McGaffey's garage. "We set out a bed for her and her kittens," says McGaffey. "But she was adamant about that suitcase."
The cats got along fine with McGaffey's two Labradors; the newly enlarged household was happy until two Pho-Sixer punks intervened.
It took San Francisco Police Officer Ronald Gehrke of Taraval Station one week to persuade terrified witnesses to tell him what had happened on April 25, 1996, at 20 minutes until 8 o'clock in the evening.
Once the witnesses agreed to speak, this is what Officer Gehrke learned:
There were two of them -- William Donald Ross, aka Junior, 15 years old, 5 feet nothing, 100 pounds, sporting a huge 'fro and wearing a beanie studded with rhinestones and a 49er jacket; and 21-year-old Amro Mohammed Ibrahim, aka Michael Mohammed, aka Emerald, 5 foot 11 and 250 pounds. They were walking Ibrahim's pit bull down 46th Avenue near McGaffey's house.
Orph was lying on the porch recovering from a recent, trying, birth. The pit chased, caught, and killed small, tired Orph. There are varying accounts of how the attack started. One neighbor told McGaffey that Junior and Emerald sicced the dog on the cat. Some witnesses told Officer Gehrke that Ross tried to call the dog off. Gehrke's report says nothing about the dog's owner, Ibrahim, doing anything to avert the killing.
The attack lasted more than five minutes. The results were, to say the least, horrifying. Afterward, most of the cat was simply gone.
"Neighbors recall the suspects training the dog to attack stuffed animals," Gehrke wrote in his report.
The neighborhood around Judah and 46th had been terrorized by gang creeps and their killer dogs for a long time before Orph was torn limb from limb. Pho-Sixer pits had attacked neighbors or their animals on several occasions, the residents told Gehrke. And Capt. Guldbech believes that area gang members own at least 15 pit bulls.
However many dogs they own, the Pho-Sixers appear to be brazen about their blood lust. One evening in July 1995, they took over a children's playground in Golden Gate Park and turned it into a fight ring. Officer Lawrence Ramlan was dispatched to the park and found Ibrahim, Ross, and several others watching Ibrahim's dog fight another pit bull. Ross was holding a 2-month-old pit pup on his lap. One of the onlookers yelled, "Cop!" The crowd scattered. Ibrahim grabbed his dog and dove into the bushes, but officers nabbed him and his bleeding, limping pit a few blocks away. Ross was picked up later. Ibrahim was cited for dogfighting. Junior was admonished; his dad had to come pick him up.
Two months later, Ibrahim and about 10 of his cohorts postured again, only more audaciously. This time, Ibrahim helped stage a dogfight in the middle of the street, right at the intersection of 46th Avenue and Judah, where everyone could see and get the not-so-subtle message: We rule this place. Stay out of our way.
The cops begged to differ, arresting Ibrahim and one James Odin Sullivan.
That winter, Ross and another little banger named Sergio Crockett, a 15-year-old who looked 12, were busted for fighting dogs at a house on the 3700 block of Ortega Street. Animal Care and Control reports show that the same dogs had been fought on three previous occasions. But Animal Control had to return the dogs to the owners. There was no way to prove the fights had been planned.
Three months later, Crockett's dogfighting career was cut short when he was stabbed more than 50 times, trussed up with electrical cord, wrapped in a blanket, and thrown from a car. Police believe he was going to collect on a drug debt the creditor was unwilling to pay.
Crockett was mourned and buried, and things went on pretty much as usual out where the street turns to sea and sand and fog.
Two months later, Orph was devoured. Then, in August, Lina Jiang was putting wash on a line at her Oceanview home and her 3-year-old toddler, little Danny Chu, was watching. Ross' dog -- the one that Animal Control had to return -- jumped the fence and chewed up the toddler's face.
It wasn't the first time the pit had been found in Jiang's yard, and this time, Animal Control was able to have the dog declared dangerous and put down.
By the time little Danny Chu was mauled, the residents around 46th and Judah had reached the boiling point. Orph's killing had already galvanized the community against the Pho-Sixers. McGaffey and two of her neighbors were pissed. They formed a neighborhood organization. They called it Orph.
They called the cops. They called Animal Care and Control. They whipped up some righteous local anger and formed a neighborhood watch.
They put up fliers screaming "Murderers in Our Neighborhood."
An 11 o'clock news segment was aired. A thug threw a bomb on McGaffey's porch, spraying her house with shrapnel and destroying a heavy wood planter. One of the Pho-Sixers' crackhead customers called and left a threatening message on her machine.
But McGaffey held firm.
Police Sgt. Ted Bell was assigned to crack down on the punks at 46th and Judah. The District Attorney's Office latched onto Ibrahim and wouldn't let go, prosecuting him on felony charges stemming from the 1995 dogfights. He's set for trial later this year.
And in April, police arrested Ibrahim for possession of crack with intent to sell.
McGaffey and her neighbors are showing up to all the court hearings. "We want to let the judge know and let Emerald's attorney know that we are watching," she says.
The other day Ibrahim's lawyer walked over and, McGaffey says, tried to explain that Ibrahim isn't such a bad guy. "You're a nice guy and I respect your role here, but you are absolutely wrong," McGaffey replied.
Now, two pit bulls owned by Amro Mohammed Ibrahim, aka Michael Mohammed, aka Emerald, are on death row at Animal Control, banging against their cages, rounding out their time on the planet by helping other pits through their temperament tests.
Once Emerald is tried and sentenced, the dogs -- Ice and Ralph -- will go under the needle. Some people think that would be an appropriate sentence for Amro "Emerald" Mohammed Ibrahim.
Scott Malvestiti certainly thinks dogfighters need a trip on the gurney. "It would be just as easy to stick that needle in their arm," he says.
Malvestiti adopted Sergio, a half pit, half hound, in February and now is something of a poster child for the SPCA's pit bull adoption program. An SPCA official describes the dog Malvestiti took home as shy, but, in reality, Sergio is a leaky bag of nerves, a real mess of a dog, the product of some unknown but obviously serious abuse. Which, of course, explains Malvestiti's whole death-to-the-dog-abusers position.
"We have to do orientation," Malvestiti tells a visitor.
Sergio is barking and growling. The dog eyes the newcomer warily. The hair on his back stands on end.
"He's not good with men," Malvestiti says.
The visitor is asked to sit on the floor, where he will appear less threatening to the dog. Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, dog biscuits and patience slowly draw Sergio out.
At first the pit-hound tries to hide behind the coffee table. Malvestiti moves the table to eliminate that haven.
Sergio paces, emitting little scared barks. He won't even look at the visitor, preferring to inexplicably stare out the sliding glass doors at the back yard, one front paw up, dangling and shaking in the air.
Malvestiti is pure patience. Slowly, employing a stern but quiet voice, he gets Sergio calmed down. The visitor finally convinces Sergio to eat out of his hand by holding out the biscuits and looking away from the dog.
Calming Sergio completely isn't in the cards. The dog is so damaged, real calm probably won't happen for years.
Malvestiti met Sergio back in January, when he went down to the SPCA to adopt a dog. Back then, pit bulls were the furthest thing from his mind.
Sergio was out in the lobby and some other guy was trying to feed him, but there was no connection.
Malvestiti sat down. Sergio sat down too. The pitiful pit bull pressed right into Malvestiti, the way dogs do when sleeping with pack members.
Then Sergio did an amazing thing: The pit-hound SPCA staffers thought would never connect with any human being stood up, circled around a couple of times, walked back over to Malvestiti, and curled up once again.
An elated buzz coursed through the SPCA staff. He approached you. He approached you, they said.
A huge wall had come down.
Malvestiti went to visit again a few days later. He still wasn't sure he wanted to adopt such a troubled dog. High maintenance doesn't even begin to describe Sergio.
Malvestiti walked into the doggie day-care room; Sergio growled at him and wouldn't come near. "I was crushed," Malvestiti says.
But when the SPCA dog trainer sat down next to Malvestiti, Sergio came over and plopped his head in his future owner's lap.
Week after week, Malvestiti went back to the SPCA and played with Sergio. They bonded. Before adopting the pit-hound in February, Malvestiti took training classes. He is utterly dedicated to a goal: giving Sergio a decent life.
One of the first images that greets a potential owner arriving at the SPCA is a set of drawings of pit bulls, posted at the adoption counter. The drawings, advertisements for the adoption program, make the dogs look more like Labradors than pits. To be sure, none looks anything like Brownie of the huge head and terrifying, steel-trap jaw. One of the drawings shows a pit bull dressed up as St. Francis of Assisi, bird perched on hand, monk robe and all.
SPCA promotional materials explain the divine comparison: "Since the name pit-bull turns everyone off, we'll give them a name change. From now on, they'll be known as St. Francis Terriers. It's a nice name, and a lot closer to what these dogs are really like. Somehow, we think St. Francis would approve."
The SPCA finishes its pro-pit spiel this way: "Forget all the propaganda and judge for yourself. You'll discover the true nature of these special dogs."
True nature? The true nature of pit bull terriers pretty much corresponds with the public perception. In the wrong hands, they can be, and frequently are, natural born killers. Ask little Danny Chu.
Propaganda? One question: Whose propaganda?
The SPCA conducts incredibly thorough and responsible background checks on potential owners. Little slips by the nonprofit. But the society is sending contradictory messages to the public. At the same time the home visits and microchipping stress the high stakes and extraordinary responsibility of owning a pit bull, the promotional sheets and the drawings and the euphemizing suggest that, hey, these little fellers are just like other pooches. In essence, the society is acting as a criminal defense attorney, spinning against the mostly accurate perception of the client, which in this case is a whole breed of dogs.
If the SPCA is to place the many pit bulls that come into its possession, this type of marketing effort -- good old American spin -- is necessary. People brimming with humanity and rescue impulse, people like Scott Malvestiti, don't walk into the SPCA every day. And those who do have to be induced to adopt a pit over less potentially lethal breeds.
If the nonprofit is the good cop on the pit-bull patrol, then Animal Care and Control is clearly the bad cop.
And many of the bad cops at Animal Control are doing a big eye-roll over the SPCA's public relations campaign, especially the St. Francis Terrier business.
"I think it's total crap," Katie Dinneen says. "These dogs were bred to fight."
She should know. Dinneen adopted a puppy, Megan, that belonged to one of the city's most notorious
dogfighters, one with aggressiveness problems, one that was found living in feces and urine, with no food or water, helping other pits eat another dog. This is a dog that, before the change in pit bull policy, Animal Control would have certainly put to sleep. "The SPCA doesn't see the range of pit bulls we see," she says. And that unfamiliarity with truly vicious pits, she says, allows the nonprofit to view the dogs -- conveniently -- as innocents.
Animal Control can't afford that luxury. It has to stay focused on the inherent viciousness of the breed, make sure the bad dogs are put down. If the agency flinches from that role, the program will eventually result in disaster.
One day last month, Feazell and Dinneen were testing a pit, a stray found out by La Playa and Judah, in Pho-Sixer territory. Feazell was watching as the stray, a medium-size female with brindle stripes, played with a light-brown pit named Smiley.
Smiley, a jumpy, barky, 1-1/2-year-old female, is the pride and joy of Animal Control. She came to the agency as the result of a cruelty case. The owner was a known dogfighter; Smiley's chances were slim to nonexistent. But Dinneen convinced Feazell to make an exception. She had a feeling about Smiley, and the dog has proved herself.
The stray has already passed all the other temperament test criteria, and the playtime with Smiley is going so well that Feazell turns to Dinneen and Guldbech and asks, "You OK with her?"
Dinneen: "Yep, I'm OK."
Guldbech: "I'm OK."
Just then, Feazell asks, "Katie, isn't this the dog that came with the other pit bull who attacked that person?"
Dinneen: "Yep."
Feazell: "We better get Colby."
Feazell goes into her office and gets Colby, who gets right to work. He charges and nudges. Colby even mounts the stray bitch from the front, creating a dog-fellatio pose that has everyone making embarrassed smiles.
Even this provocation doesn't seem to rile the brindle stray. Then, out of nowhere, for no particular reason, at least none that anyone notices, the stray goes into pit attack mode.
Dinneen and Feazell separate the dogs.
The three women look at one another and shake their heads.
Feazell bends down and scratches the brindle stray behind the ear.
"Sorry kiddo," she says.
