Baker City dangerous-dog rules face scrutiny after 2024 attack

Baker City’s dangerous-dog ordinance came back under scrutiny after Barbara Johnson said the city’s response to a late-June 2024 attack still left her without confidence that the system protected her neighborhood on Second Street in south Baker City.

Johnson was walking a few blocks from home when a border collie bit her, and her husband, Larry Johnson, was also bitten on the knee in the same incident. Baker City code enforcement officer Mike Flynn impounded the dog afterward, and Judge Brent Kerns later ruled it vicious under the city’s 2014 ordinance. Johnson has remained upset that the dog was allowed to go back home.

The case has put a spotlight on how the city’s rules work in practice. Baker City says Flynn handles animal-control matters within the city, including stray-dog pickup, barking complaints, abuse and neglect cases, licenses, kennel permits, and livestock and exotic-animal permits. The city’s animal-control page directs residents with animal complaints to Baker County Dispatch, making dispatch the first stop for many calls before the matter reaches city enforcement.

The ordinance itself was adopted in response to one of Baker City’s most painful public-safety cases. The Baker City Council approved Ordinance No. 3327 on Jan. 14, 2014, after the fatal mauling of 5-year-old Jordan Ryan by a pit bull on Sept. 27, 2013. Council records say the law created regulations and restrictions for dangerous and vicious dogs, and a 2014 council agenda said it added a licensing fee for dogs deemed dangerous by the city’s hearings officer.

That history still hangs over the debate. In October 2013, police were finishing the investigation into Jordan Ryan’s death and planned to turn the report over to the district attorney’s office. More than a decade later, Johnson’s case has revived the same question that followed that tragedy: whether the city’s process gives owners due process without leaving neighbors exposed after a dog has already bitten someone.

Baker City’s animal rules sit inside Chapter 90 of the municipal code, while Oregon law in Chapter 609 also covers dangerous dogs, impoundment, and hearings. Officials who work with the system say it is generally effective, but Johnson’s experience showed the gap residents see between a ruling on paper and the peace of mind they want on their own streets.