Lauren Samperi went to the Derby animal shelter last September with her 9‑year-old son and instantly fell in love with a dog named Chase.
She went to the Coon Hollow Road facility several times in an attempt to see if the dog would make a good fit for her family.
About 18 months old, the pit bull would follow commands, was “submissive and sweet,” and had good manners, Samperi said.
She didn’t say the same about Derby’s veteran animal control officer, Joe Klapcik.
“Every time I went I was basically verbally abused and antagonized,” said Samperi, a Monroe resident who has been involved with rescuing animals for five years.
She said Klapcik would belittle her and discipline dogs unnecessarily.
Once she was working with Chase on a leash when Klapcik told her she was a “dumbass” and didn’t know how to train dogs.
He then choked Chase into submission repeatedly, she said.
“I felt every time I went he felt the need to prove something to me with the dog,” Samperi said. “The more I went back, the more he took it out on the dog.”
Klapcik then told her Chase had to be put down because the dog bit him.
Samperi stopped going to the Derby Animal Shelter.
The experience made her wonder — just who was supervising Derby’s lone animal control officer?
What Gives?
It was a question repeated Monday, after news spread that Klapcik quit his post and that conditions inside the Derby pound on Coon Hollow Road weren’t fit for the dogs inside.
“You wonder if nobody said anything and he didn’t say anything, maybe they turned a blind eye to what was going on rather than address it?” Samperi said Tuesday.
Klapcik, the town’s part-time animal control officer for 18 years, quit in a huff April 13. The Valley Indy left messages on his cell phone Monday and Tuesday.
He was paid $26,000 annually in the position. Click here to read more about his departure.
Oxford Animal Control Officers were called to cover Klapcik’s duties. They apparently found a mess inside the Derby pound and called for volunteers to come to Derby to clean the place up.
A dog was taken to a vet — who didn’t return Valley Indy calls for comment — and a rabbit was taken to a friend of the Oxford Animal Control Officer Sandy Merry.
Merry wouldn’t go on the record about the conditions in Derby Monday.
But a volunteer told the Valley Indy the Derby pound was filthy, reeked of urine and had piles of feces inside. Click here to read her account.
Dog advocates also complained the dogs in Derby were not receiving exercise and that the city constantly rejected people who wanted to volunteer at the shelter.
Derby Shelter Closes
On Tuesday afternoon, the Derby Police Department closed the shelter.
In his first public comments on the issue, Derby Police Chief Gerald Narowski said Tuesday dogs in the pound were given to an animal control facility in Woodbridge.
The Derby facility will remained closed, Narowski said, while Derby and Woodbridge work out a formal agreement to “regionalize” animal control efforts.
It was a plan that had been percolating for weeks as Klapcik was due to retire at the end of this month, the chief said.
His sudden departure required Oxford to be called in for “mutual aid” Friday while Derby made quick arrangements to transfer animal control duties to Woodbridge, Narowski said.
‘Animals Not Neglected’
The chief took issue with the description of the animal shelter as described to the Valley Indy.
Narowski said he was inside the pound at the end of the day Friday.
There were no signs of neglect to the animals, the chief said. The dogs were not abandoned, he said.
“Four of us walked through Friday. The dogs were there. They had food and water. They were barking and wagging their tails. There was some feces on the ground, but it didn’t look like anything that had accumulated for more than a few hours,” he said.
The chief said the Coon Hollow Road facility was an animal control facility — that is, a temporary shelter for dogs. It was not a rescue group or permanent shelter, he said.
“It’s a holding facility, regulated by the state and subject to random state inspections,” Narowski said.
Tuesday Inspection
In fact, a state animal control officer was sent to Coon Hollow Road Tuesday to inspect the building.
The inspector found two issues, Narowski said.
One was for a clogged drain pipe, while the second was for wooden doggie doors that had been chewed by the dogs.
Narowski said the violations did not prevent animals from being housed in the facility. He characterized them as minor.
Past Inspections
Tuesday’s inspection was the first time the Derby shelter had been inspected since Nov. 14, 2008.
Raymond Connors, a supervisor with the state’s Animal Control Division, said in an e‑mail the agency can’t inspect dog pounds as often as they’d like because of staff shortages.
“However, these are facilities operated by the municipalities and very rarely are there problems with any municipal pounds,” Connors said.
The Valley Independent Sentinel, through a Freedom of Information request to the state, received the three most recent inspections done prior to Tuesday’s visit.
An inspector visited the site twice in 2008 and once in 2006. Derby received violations for allowing the facility to fall into disrepair.
The city was cited for items such as crumbling concrete and inadequate fencing. Kennels weren’t sealed from the elements. Those items were all repaired.
However, the inspector never cited Klapcik’s pound for things such as cleanliness, animal care, food supply, odors or vermin.
The Derby shelter is old, apparently built in the 1970s, officials said.
It could not be used as a dog pound if it were built the same way today.
State law allows older pounds to be “grandfathered,” omitting them from some building requirements.
‘Unacceptable’
In March 2011 the Valley Indy wrote extensively about the Derby pound’s unusually high kill rate. Just about 50 percent of the dogs taken into the shelter between 2007 and 2010 were put to sleep. Click here to read that story.
That rate dropped once Narowski became chief of police. Click here for more information.
In addition, the city spent an unspecified amount of money in 2011 to make improvements to the property. That money was spent prior to Klapcik’s retirement announcement and before the city planned to regionalize.
However, animal advocates who read the Valley Indy’s report in 2011 were shocked to learn the city still employed Klapcik as its animal control officer.
Dina Nocerino, of Woodbridge, is the founder of Karuna Bully Rescue, the group that helped Oxford Animal Control Officers at the Derby pound over the weekend.
She questioned whether Derby officials cared about the dogs in the shelter.
“Right now I can’t stop thinking ‘What is the police department doing in Derby?’ It’s their job to make sure it’s being done well and it’s a massive failure,” Nocerino said. “It’s unacceptable.”
Nocerino remembered reading the Valley Independent Sentinel’s story last year about the shelter’s high kill rate and figured Klapcik would be fired because of it.
“As soon as the town found out this guy was killing 50 percent of the dogs that came through his door he should have been booted,” she said.
Nocerino also got a look inside the Derby facility over the weekend. She repeated what other volunteers told the Valley Indy — the place was full of dog and mice droppings.
“I thought it was pretty nasty when I got there Sunday. I’ve seen much nicer shelters,” she said.
Upon learning Derby dogs would now be housed in Woodbridge, Nocerino took to Facebook late Tuesday, writing, in part:
“I’m disgusted with the Town of Derby and will be curious to see how well their dumped and stray dogs will be cared for now,” she said. “A shelter shouldn’t just be a place to confine dogs and feed them, but also an establishment that helps educate the community (with) regard to properly caring for their pets.”
Art Gerckens, a Derby Alderman who represents the city’s Second Ward, said Tuesday the dog pound saga reflects a larger, laissez-faire attitude of Derby government.
“We’re getting reactive policing and reactive politicking when we need to be proactive,” he said.
No one in local government seems to want to deal with tough issues directly, Gerckens said.
Mayor Anthony Staffieri or Klapcik’s supervisors in the Derby Police Department owe the public an explanation about the conditions inside the facility and the way it was operated, Gerckens said.
Staffieri did not return the Valley Indy calls for comment Monday or Tuesday.
“That’s the bigger issue. I mean, come on,” Gerckens said. “Are we going to have a ‘buck stops here moment?’ This is the chief’s watch. A lot of the old issues there were blamed on the former chief, but the new chief has been on the job for awhile. What does it take to send an officer there once or twice a week to make sure everything is up to snuff?”
Gerckens said he hopes to convince his fellow Aldermen to discuss the dog pound issue at the next Aldermen meeting.
Bad Feelings
Then there people such as Samperi, who was willing to adopt a dog from Derby but somehow ran afoul of Klapcik.
The Valley Indy received similar reports in 2011 — and received them again Monday and Tuesday. The common themes — people either tried to adopt dogs and were thwarted or tried to volunteer at the pound and were rejected.
Keanne Yannarella, a Derby resident, had a particularly maddening encounter with Derby police and Klapcik after she simply tried to help two pit bulls roaming her street.
Two weeks ago, Klapcik said he was planning to leave Derby and its animals behind prior to his retirement date, Yannarella said.
Part of her experience was chronicled within this story and she elaborated on it on the Valley Indy Facebook page.
Yannarella, Gerckens and others said they’re ashamed residents from Oxford and Woodbridge had to come to Derby to help the Derby dog pound, when there is a reservoir of untapped volunteers in Derby.
For whatever reason, neither Klapcik nor Derby police would allow volunteers to work at the shelter, they said.
Click here for more reactions from local readers about the shelter’s closing.
And click here to read Valley readers react to the conditions at the pound.
Narowski said Derby police were trying to arrange for volunteers to assist the pound, but they could not match the public’s availability with Klapcik’s work schedule.
When asked about Klapcik’s seemingly uncanny ability to rub the public the wrong way, Narowski acknowledged that Klapcik had people issues.
He could also be hard to get on the phone, the chief said. But he wasn’t neglecting or harming animals, Narowski said.
“We fully believe that Joe was doing his job as animal control officer. He was problematic when it came to some policies and procedures, which we were going over with him,” the chief said. “But yes, he could have used some improvement in his social skills.”
