Rocky, an 11-year-old Chihuahua, was walking with his owner just east of the Panhandle when a pit bull began charging at him. The 10-pound canine was no match for its 70-pound assailant, whose jaws locked onto the tiny dog’s belly.
Panicked bystanders intervened. When the pit bull finally released Rocky, the Chihuahua was disemboweled. He died hours later, on Oct. 4, at a nearby veterinary clinic.
Less than two months earlier, at Sixth and Jesse streets in SoMa, a black 11-month-old pit bull named Bad Ass had latched onto the arm of a 57-year-old man trying to protect his much smaller dog. It took two hours and 200-plus stitches — not to mention days more recovering in the hospital — to patch up the V-shaped gash on the man’s arm.
Normally, such brutal attacks, detailed in bite reports compiled by San Francisco Animal Care and Control, would land the pit bulls’ owners in canine court, a quasi-judicial arbitration system founded in 2001. A de facto judge would then decide whether to sentence the offending canine to behavioral training, muzzling, or, as a last resort, euthanasia.
Since the city abruptly suspended all canine court hearings in late June, however, dozens of cases are languishing in a mounting backlog. Two involved dogs biting children. Another two accused dogs of biting police officers. Others left animals and humans variously marred or mangled.
None have been adjudicated, and it’s unclear when, or if, they will be.
Meanwhile, dog bites continue to rise. More than 800 bites were reported to the San Francisco Police Department in the first nine months of 2025 — putting this year on pace to break the record 868 bites reported in 2024 and the 760 incidents in 2023, after dipping to a low of 590 during the pandemic in 2020.
Canine court hearings, for their part, fell from 159 in 2020 to 42 in 2024 and 32 in 2025.
This isn’t the first pause since the city initiated the hearings two decades ago in the wake of a high-profile mauling that claimed the life of a beloved lacrosse coach (opens in new tab). Last year, a dispute over funding led hearings to lapse for four months.
From July through November in 2024, the city heard just one case, involving a husky that badly injured a toddler’s arm, in no small part because of how much publicity it received. It reinstated the hearings last fall around the time of another headline-grabbing attack (opens in new tab) at a Safeway store in Fillmore, where cops shot two of three attacking dogs, one of which died.
But this year marks the first time the hearings have ground to a halt with no clear plan about how to resume them. The agencies responsible under city law for overseeing the proceedings — the SFPD, Department of Public Health, and Animal Care and Control — don’t seem to be on the same page.
The lawyer who for years acted as canine court judge was fired over the summer, and there appears to be no plan about transferring her duties to a successor.
Officer Greg Sutherland, the SFPD’s one-man Vicious and Dangerous Dog Unit, continues to investigate dog attacks — but the cases are piling up with no resolution in sight. According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya, Sutherland had 21 cases ready to be heard as of early this past week, and was investigating another 25.
While the SFPD acts as a prosecutor in the hearings, it hasn’t led them since 2018, when a civil grand jury found (opens in new tab) several problems with management by Animal Care and Control and the SFPD, including hearing decisions that didn’t hew to the city’s health code, inattention to due process, and insufficient support for the one police officer assigned to the job.
For the past seven years, the Department of Police Accountability has handled the proceedings, lending one of its line attorneys — Janelle Caywood — as judge. Caywood, who has threatened to sue the city after the DPA fired her in August (opens in new tab), declined to comment.
On paper, it seems the city wants to ramp up enforcement of dangerous dogs. After years of planning, the city on Sept. 30 finally inked an agreement with a federal government trust (opens in new tab) to have Animal Care and Control deal with biting dogs handed over by the Presidio Park Police.
Earlier this year, the SFPD revised a policy to start enforcing the city’s leash laws by either citing or warning owners for letting their dogs roam free outside of designated dog parks. That order (opens in new tab), which was last updated in 1994, is pending review of the police union.
However, none of the agencies responsible for seizing dangerous dogs, bringing them to hearings, or appointing hearing officers responded to The Standard’s queries about how they plan to proceed now that the DPA stopped holding the hearings.
The SFPD confirmed that the last hearing was held on June 24, but said the department doesn’t facilitate or schedule them, so had no information to add. Public Health referred questions back to Animal Care and Control, which in turn rerouted questions to the SFPD.
Internally, sources at the DPA said they were told by their superiors that the city had allocated no money to continue canine court hearings while meeting its obligation to police the police.
The DPA took days to respond to requests for on-the-record comment before finally deferring to the mayor’s office. A spokesperson for the mayor said only that “the money is there in the budget for DPA to conduct hearings.”
The DPA and mayor’s office have failed to respond to repeated requests for more details about the court’s budget.
Mike Black, a Rottweiler attack victim who became a canine court watchdog, has filmed virtually every hearing for years. He cautioned that it might take another tragedy to force the city’s hand again, and get canine court back in session.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, “if things just continue like this until something really, really bad happens with a dog.”