The fallout continues to reverberate from Crestwood Mayor Roy Robinson’s last town-hall meeting.
As we wrote last month, we fielded more than a few telephone calls from people who raised their eyebrows over comments made by Roy at his Sept. 10 town-hall meeting about how Kirkwood and Webster Groves handle animal control.
“When they pick up an animal, and it’s got a problem and they can’t handle it or whatever, they shoot it,” Roy said. “I mean, you don’t hear anything about this, but it’s done. There’s a report made, and they shoot the animal. And that’s how they take care of your pets that get out …”
As we previously noted, Roy’s comments came as a complete surprise to police officials in both Kirkwood and Webster Groves, who told the Call’s Evan Young their officers would shoot an animal only if it were dangerous and all other efforts to control it had failed.
But, as usual, Roy’s right and everyone else is wrong. In fact, at the Sept. 22 Board of Aldermen meeting, Roy insisted his remarks were accurate.
“I’m absolutely correct on that, no matter what anybody says in the paper or otherwise,” he said. “That was a staff study done here by our people in the city, and it is the gospel. There is nothing that was said falsely in that meeting.”
Ward 3 Alderman Jerry Miguel obtained a copy of that “staff study” — actually an internal memorandum from the police chief to the city administrator — and last week asked Roy to prove — or apologize for — his statements about animal control in Kirkwood and Webster Groves.
Given Roy’s remarks, one easily could surmise that police officers in those cities would not hesitate to willy-nilly shoot your pet if it happened to get outside. The memo makes it clear that’s not the case.
Not surprisingly, Roy contends the memo fully supports his comments.
We disagree. But don’t take our word for it, the entire memo can be read at
at the end of a news article this week about the Oct. 13 aldermanic meeting.
And that apology? Roy told Mr. Miguel he has no plans to issue one: “… You’ll have a long wait if you’re waiting for me to come back and apologize for anything. So, I’m not even going to talk to you anymore about this …”
Though Roy may be done talking about this issue, we’re positive residents haven’t heard the last of it as Roy’s shoot-from-the-hip comments are a continual source of embarrassment to Crestwood and its citizens.
