~by Victoria Riley, GreeneCountyNewsOnline publisher
What doesn’t city of Jefferson officials want us to know about the investigation, trial, and sentencing of Lily?
Lily, a brindled dog who lived at the corner of S. Vine and W. Madison Sts, was accused of biting a child in Russell Park last month. Within a few hours, Lily was impounded on a mandatory 10-day quarantine following a dog bite. Her owner, Allison Drewry, was told Lily would not be allowed to return to the community.
Drewry attended the next city council meeting, Aug. 22, and explained the circumstances of the accusation against Lily during the council’s open forum. Although the agenda stated that people are limited to 2-5 minutes during the open forum, she was allowed to read her entire statement, which lasted 7-8 minutes.
She explained that Lily had been loose very briefly the morning of the incident, that Lily had raced south on Vine St straight toward her parents’ home at the end of the street, and that Lily was out of her sight for the very brief time it took her to collect her car keys from right inside her back door.
Drewry got in her car, drove south on Vine St, and one block later (if you use side streets as your measure, two blocks if you use house numbers) Lily jumped in the car and went home. She was a block east of the tennis courts at Russell Park.
Lily’s very short romp was at 11 am. At 12:39 pm a mother reported to the Jefferson PD that her son had been bitten by a brown dog at Russell Park. The report didn’t state where at the park the child was when he was bitten. Even if he were playing tennis, it was further than a block from where Lily got back in Drewry’s car.
The time between Lily’s romp and when the bite was reported may not be critical to the story. It’s possible, although I find it unlikely, that the report was 1-1/2 hours after the bite. If my child were bitten by a dog, I’d take him for medical treatment first and then report it.
However, I know from experience that officers are called to the emergency room to respond to a dog bite. Perhaps the child’s bite wasn’t serious enough to merit the emergency room, but instead his mother took him to the local walk-in clinic. The timeline works, but if that’s the case, I’m surprised staff at the clinic didn’t take a moment to alert the police, or at least suggest to the mother that she should call the JPD ASAP.
Officer Bohden Bigler was the duty officer that day. He showed up at Drewry’s door asking questions that afternoon. (I don’t know what led him to that address except that city dog licenses provide a data base of where dogs live.) Drewry said before learning the reason for Bigler’s visit that Lily had been out for a very short time that morning, but that she had a visual on her for all but just a few seconds.
Bigler asked for a photo of Lily and Drewry complied. He took the photo to the child’s mother and another person who lives across the street from the park and reported being menaced by a brown dog that morning. That dog, though, had run north, not south.
Neither of the women identified the photo as the offending dog.
Bigler returned to Drewry and got another photo. Still, no positive ID. He next showed the complainants a full body picture of Lily. He was on Drewry’s porch with the child’s mother on speaker phone when she said, after seeing the third photo, that she couldn’t identify Lily as the dog that bit her son.
Bigler took another picture over the fence and left. He returned and told Drewry Lily had been identified, and that after the 10-day quarantine she would not be allowed back into the community.
Most of us who have dogs, particularly those of us who have no other humans in the household but only dogs, think of our dogs as our children. There was no option for Drewry to let Lily leave the community without her. She knew immediately that she and her three dogs would move from Jefferson.
That would be difficult to deal with knowing your dog had done the deed, but in this case, there’s a reasonable doubt. Drewry is sure Lily didn’t bite the child.
Although I can see Drewry’s house from my office window, I hadn’t met any of her dogs. (I still haven’t met them.) Their outside time was in a yard enclosed by a privacy fence. They’re quiet dogs. I hear other neighbors’ dogs bark, just as they occasionally hear mine, but I had never even heard barking from behind that fence.
I did, though, see the first picture Drewry shared with Officer Bigler. Lily’s appearance is distinctive. She has long, shiny medium-brown hair with a brindle. I don’t recall ever seeing a long-haired, brindled dog. I would have remembered that.
The complainants were shown pictures of only one brown dog, Lily, and three times they didn’t identify her as the biter.
Surely if someone said they had been struck by a brown car and provided no other identifying information, they’d be shown pictures of several different brown cars to identify the car involved. They wouldn’t be shown a picture of the nearest brown car over and over, tainting their memory of the event until they finally said, “yes, that must be the car.”
We’ve all seen line-ups on television. Several people of similar build and skin tone, including the suspect, are viewed by the victim. A positive ID from among several possible suspects is crucial to a case.
Not so when it involves a brown dog close to the end of Officer Bigler’s shift on a Friday afternoon. He went back a fourth time, he said, and then told Drewry Lily had been identified. I wonder what he said to those women to convince them of Lily’s guilt?
Drewry is a good pet owner; Lily is properly vaccinated, and the mother of the bitten child knew that. Still, she chose to have her son endure a series of painful rabies shots. If she were certain Lily was the dog, would she have put her son through that ordeal?
Mayor Matt Gordon at the Sept. 12 council meeting muzzled Jim North, who was reading a statement from Drewry. That one time, Gordon decided to enforce a time limit on open forum comments after less than three minutes. That deadline is seldom invoked.
GreeneCountyNewsOnline gave Drewry her chance to state her case, posting her comments, in full, the next day.
Readers took note. One commented, “that the mayor and the council won’t allow her to state this case definitely reeks of a coverup.”
Another wrote that she hopes people read her comments “and then take another look at our city police… or at least some of the officers.”
North standing to read Drewry’s comments did not take the mayor or the council by surprise. Drewry had spent considerable time emailing and talking with police chief Mark Clouse, city administrator Scott Peterson and city attorney David Morain prior to the meeting, asking to be placed on the agenda.
The mayor makes the final call on what is and isn’t on the agenda. He chose not to place Drewry’s concerns on the agenda, which would have allowed more time to state the case. That left the open forum as the only option, and that gave Gordon the chance to refuse to allow her to present her concerns about the “investigation”.
Council members did not make eye contact with North when he was shut down. Council member Darren Jackson finally broke an uncomfortable silence, saying the city council had seen Officer Bigler’s body cam and that he had “acted correctly.”
Drewry’s father went to the podium to comment. The mayor shut him down even faster than he shut down North, that time calling out Drewry for using a word that isn’t usually used in public meetings.
I wonder what the mayor feared if the public heard Drewry’s comments. Was he afraid constituents would question if the investigation of the dog bite was slipshod due to the failure to offer photos of other brown dogs, or perhaps being finished in haste?
I suppose it’s easy to say, “Let it go. It’s a dog,” or to remind us that “innocent until proven guilty” applies to people, not dogs.
I understand.
But this unfortunate event was traumatic and had a huge impact not only on Allison Drewry, but on her parents as well. They were glad to have Allison nearby as they approach their older years. That’s one of the reasons Allison, who was very happy in Boston, decided to move back to Jefferson.
When one cover-up is suspected, it’s easy to suspect others. Lily’s story erodes public trust in the police, the council, and the mayor.
I understand that, too, and I think it’s important.
That’s a high price for all of us to pay for an incomplete, hasty investigation on a summer Friday afternoon and the mayor’s refusal to allow dialog about it.
