Last month we brought you cruelty complaints statistics. Cruelty complaints are the result of members of the public contacting the Seattle Animal Shelter (SAS) to report possible acts of animal cruelty or neglect. (SAS is a part of the City of Seattle and it manages the city’s animal services.) SAS dispatches its field officers to investigate the calls.
REPORTED NUMBER OF ANIMAL VICTIMS
Individual cruelty complaints can involve varying numbers of animals, from one to many. Just looking at the cruelty complaints alone does not adequately reflect the number of animals that are the subjects of the complaints. This month we used data obtained from the City of Seattle via public disclosure request. “Reported numbers” refers to numbers that were in the Seattle data, entered by SAS staff.
As you can see, the number of complaints does not actually reflect the number of animals involved in the complaints. For example, the highest number of complaints was in 2016 and involved 1,224 animals. The highest number of animals was in 2018 with 1,318 animals and 952 complaints, twenty complaints fewer than in 2016. We also see a drop in 2020 due to the pandemic, but there has been a significant increase since then, with 830 complaints involving 1,232 animals. This represents the highest ratio of animals involved per cruelty complaint of the seven year period.
WHAT ARE THE ACTUAL NUMBERS?
In the course of our research, we found an average of 81 complaints from 2016 to 2022 with no entry in the number of animals involved in the cruelty complaints (blank entries are significantly higher pre-COVID than post-COVID.) We therefore attempted to estimate the numbers of animals involved in these complaints using notes entered by the field officers.
Please note that we are being conservative and most likely underestimating the number of animals involved. However, it is important to note the difference between these “unreported animals” vs “reported animals.” Our conservative approach resulted in an average of 167 additional animals as subjects of SAS cruelty complaints from 2016 to 2022.
Here is our estimating methodology:
When the notes specifically state the number of animals in the complaint, we used that number in the “number of animals” field (these could range from as low as 1 to as high as 100.)
If there were no notes, we entered “1” assuming there was at least one animal involved in the complaint.
In cases where a plural was used but no numbers, as in “rabbits” we entered “2.” This is most likely an underestimate.
In notes involving mixed species, we counted each species as a “1” unless it was a plural. In those cases, we entered a “2.” For example, an entry saying “rabbits, goats, and 1 dog” would be 2 rabbits plus 2 goats plus 1 dog or 5 animals. Again, we believe this is still an underestimate.
As you can see, the estimated numbers are higher than the reported numbers entered in the data. However, the overall trend continues with high pre-COVID numbers, followed by a COVID drop-off and then a subsequent increase year by year.
