Memphis Animal Shelter Web Cams May Come Down

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Are the eyes trained on the Memphis Animal Shelter about to be closed? The shelter's Advisory Board announced earlier this week that they will no longer have monthly public meetings. Now Mayor Wharton says web cams may not be accessible once the new shelter opens.

Shelter workers have filed a grievance over the internationally watched web cameras at the Memphis Animal Shelter. They claim they're being threatened by people watching.

"They're the only ones, nobody else in city government has to work with cameras over their shoulders," said Memphis Mayor A C Wharton.

While there may be a need for the cameras later, Mayor Wharton says web cameras are not up at the new animal shelter set to open this fall. Right now Wharton says he doesn't have the money for the cameras, but some say the cameras are important to the welfare of animals taken into the shelter.

"If they are doing everything right than they shouldn't have any problem with the cameras being in there," said Beverly King, animal advocate.

As for the openness of the Shelter Advisory Board, Wharton says he wasn't aware of the board's decision to close monthly public meetings. He says he wants to revisit the decision with the board, though he says he was told some meetings were disruptive.

"The decorum was much less than required and that comes from folks being fairly objective," he said. "You just couldn't get anything done."

Before Thursday night's closed Advisory Board Meeting at city hall, we caught up with board member, Dr. Stephen Tower. He said they closed the meetings to get work done, and will now invite the public quarterly rather than monthly. "They could get high pitched but as far as it getting out of hand, never," he said. "Our attorney has told us we are not in violation of the Sunshine Law at this time. These are work sessions."

The shelter continues to take a lot of heat with the case of missing dog Kapone, still unsolved. He's one of at least 40 dogs alleged to have gone missing from the shelter this year.

City records showing last year there were 155 missing dogs. The year before, there were 282. That's out of a combined 30,000 plus dogs taken in during a two year period.

As for the shelter workers request to have the web cams taken down from the existing shelter, the city says it hasn't yet made a decision.