Original video in Romanian:
http://www.gandul.info/magazin/cine-toaca-banii-pentru-cainii-maidanezi-explicatiile-lui-razvan-bancescu-seful-aspa-in-exclusivitate-la-schimba-vorba-12323954
0:00 Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Glad to have you
today on "Schimba Vorba".
Tonight our guest is Razvan Bancescu, project coordinator at
ASPA.
First of all, lets remind people where we are (regarding the
stray dogs problem)
A couple of days ago a woman was found dead and bitten.
The doctors from I.M.L. didn't figure out yet if she died
because she was too drunk or from the bites. She had a 4 promille alcohol
concentration in her blood.
On the other hand the woman was found bitten by a pack of
stray dogs.
00:51 Razvan Bancescu: I don't know it if was a pack. She
was behind a bench in the park.
So the dogs were in a park.
00:58 Bancescu: Yes
So they lived there.
Yes
So after all of this ASPA got into this and started with
banning people from adopting stray dogs. On Aspa's website there's a long list
that i published on my facebook with the people who are not allowed to adopt
anymore. Why aren't they allowed to adopt anymore?
1:25 Razvan Bancescu We would wish the list to be final, to
not find anymore cases of abandoned stray dogs (from those taken from ASPA
shelters). What we can prove regarding abandonment we posted online
How do you prove people took dogs and abandoned them?
Razvan Bancescu: We have declarations from people who adopt
stray dogs, who contain identification and microchip of the dog and who said
they will take the dog to a certain address but we either found the dog in the
streets (we recaptured them) or we found them at a different address which was
not mentioned initially.
2:06 How many dogs are involved in this?
Razvan Bancescu: there are over 160 dogs that we found on
the streets.
The list contains people that adopted large numbers of dogs (110, 120, 172 dogs), like Mrs. Pahomi,
the woman who was the holder of some of the dogs involved in this case.
3:03 What is the legal right of ASPA for doing this?
Razvan Bancescu: It's more of a moral right regarding this
situation. We can't finish our program if we have these kind of situations.
It's a neverending story like this.
4:57 What's the plan? How did you decide to resolve this
issue (the stray dog problem) considering there are dogs on the streets that
bite, attack,etc.
Razvan Bancescu 5:09 These measures were drawn up at the end
of 2012 and approved in may 2013 by the General council. It's not the death of
Ionut in september that determined to take action.
Razvan Bancescu :In 2012 and before there weren't much money
at our disposal. But with the new council decisions and the law at the end of
2013 and the publication of the norms....
So you are the dogs catchers also, right?
Razvan Bancescu :Yes, there's no shame about that.
How many people call each day?
Razvan Bancescu: 40 - 45 people and also aprox. 20-25
written petitions. So almost 60
in total.
How many criminal complaints do you get daily from NGO's?
We don't have those daily yet, but we are not far away from
it.
Do you have a legal right to do this? The NGO's accuse you
that you don't have any right
Razvan Bancescu: For them, anything that comes against their
mission is an abuse.
Do you have anything against the protection of animals?
7:06 No, of course not, i have 3 dogs, 1 is a stray dog.
We don't handle 200-300 dogs as shown on TV on RSPCA,
handled with care, with gloves, taken in arms.
We catch over 200 dogs daily.
question from the public: What studies do the dog catchers
have?
7:53: Sadly there is no school to train dog catchers, we
train them. We strive, in all of this routine, to cause no harm.
8:14 There are images and videos (on which the NGO's base
their accusations) that dogs are ill-treated.
Razvan Bancescu: No, all our equipment is homologated. The
most traumatizing technique is the use of the catching pole. They are brought
from the U.S.
They can be tighten or loosen. It's their marketing.
9:08 There are sensitive people out there who don't agree
with these methods. Your plan will never work if the NGO's don't agree with
your catching techniques.
Razvan Bancescu: The projects has drawn out lines. The NGO's
can adhere to them or not. They had enough time. If they want to help, they
should do it regarding adoptions. But responsible adoptions, not just take dogs
of because of fear of euthanasia and we find them in the streets again. This
part is not negociable.
10:01 People talk about sterilization as a solution to this
problem.
Razvan Bancescu:
Sterilization is nothing (dust) in regard to the situation we have now
in Bucharest.
How many dogs are in Bucharest
now?
Razvan Bancescu: Over
40.000, We estimated using the extrapolation method. we count the dogs in an
area during the day and during the night and we extrapolate that to the area of
Bucharest.
40.000?
Well, we started from 65000 dogs. We caught about 12000 dogs
until today.
Over half of them were adopted.
11:20 How can stray
dogs suddenly appear on a street?
Razvan Bancescu: Dogs migrate in certain conditions from one
territory to another. For example, after a couple of rains and depending on the
wind direction these territories can change or intersect, but if 2 dogs
suddenly appear and they seem confused it means someone brought them. We have
this situations on a number of streets. With the help of the new budget we hope
to acquire some video cameras and mount them in these areas where citizens
report these kind of things.
There is a movie on the internet (shows the video from the
ASPA raid in the vier pfoten shelter)
In this movie you enter on a private terrain.
Razvan Bancescu: No, the terrain belongs to ADP district 6
Why did you enter there?
Because the gates were opened for us by the legal owners of
the land, District 6 town hall. They were notified of this. It's their problem
if they decided to stay or not..i don't know. They had a protocol which also
stipulated leaving that base (terrain).
But why did you go there?
16:28 Yes, all sorts of things happen there, we had info
regarding dog trafficking. We didn't know who those dogs belong to. There's an
obligation that all dogs be registered.
What does dog trafficking mean? Sounds very weird...
Part of this involves adoptions and international adoptions
made just so the dogs can be moved around.
In southern Italy
for example they banned international adoptions because they couldn't control
this. The Napoli, Sicilia areas.
Ok, so you went there, got the dogs...
Razvan Bancescu: We went there, got the dogs, put them in
our vans...
Why?
Razvan Bancescu: Because they don't have any papers for
them. If those dogs there get moved anywhere, or on the street i am at risk of
being bitten or maybe worse and then we will search for who is guilty..
So they weren't microchipped?
18:15 Razvan Bancescu: just a part. From what i managed to
scan on friday, from 40 dogs, only 12 were microchipped.
And these 12 that were microchipped belonged to...?
Razvan Bancescu: We can consider that those people that came
to get them out today are their owners and we encourage adoptions, but we want
to know (according to the law) who those dogs belong to.
Can NGO's make
partnerships with town halls to take care of the dogs?
18:38 Razvan Bancescu :There is the possibility to adopt.
Anything more than this can hurt more, hurt the community. i can give you an
example with the same NGO that had a
sterilization program with ASPA. A program dragged from 2010 up until 2012 that
we finally started because it was good for us.
Why was it postponed?
Razvan Bancescu: They were gone in Sudan, Ukraine, The Danube delta,etc.
Stray dogs counted only when elections came. We had a target, they came and
made 20 sterilizations then went off to Sudan, came back and made another
20. We can't make things this way. We notified them to leave the room, they
sued us, we won the lawsuit and we will evacuate them
Do you have something against these NGO's? People on
facebook say that you are a criminal organization that steals the public money
Razvan Bancescu: there are good and bad town halls and there
are good and bad NGO's
ASPA cooperates with other NGO's. We didn't find any
problems with them so we will continue with them.
In the list we published there are only a part of the NGO's.
How many NGO's are in Bucharest
that handle dogs?
20:46 Razvan Bancescu: Here there's a problem, many appear
as NGO's but they don't have a fiscal code and they receive money from
donations.
How do you know they receive money from donations?
Razvan Bancescu: Because we watched/followed the
transactions on the internet. There are different types of donations. For the
well being of the animals (i guess he means for food) and for the adoption
preparations in other countries.
These donations should be made with an IBAN code and a SWIFT
code. For 2 years since i monitor these, they are made through paypal addresses.
I wanted to know why there is such a resistance to not resolve this problem in Bucharest.
I had problems with these NGO's even regarding
sterilization.
These donations ended up in the paypal address of the owner
of the NGO, for them to take care of the animals or getting them ready for
transport.
You say you have evidence, shouldn't we have names also?
Shouldn't you take these evidences to the police?
20:25 Razvan Bancescu: No, there are institutions that
received this information. They received this data in October last year.
If these were illegal, don't you think those institutions
should have initiated some lawsuits?
23:19: There's a lot of data, we're talking about data
gather in over 1 and a half years.
They are investigated by ANAF
I gave a report to the ministry of finances (in september
last year) that included the number of NGO's that handled dogs in bucharest in 2001, and there
were 7 then. Now there are 58 + 12 or so that don't have a fiscal code.
They don't pay taxes, deceiving, and working without papers.
Show host: But i think most of the NGO's are serious, real
and take care of the dogs.
24:33 From our analysis 2001 - 2012, it all started with
funds around 136000 euros for these
NGO's in 2001 and in 2012, more than 2 million euros in Bucharest.
These money come from donations and international transfers
and also the 230 form through which anyone can donate 2% of their taxes.
On what are these kind of money spent on?
Razvan Bancescu: Mainly marketing, meaning how to say that
ASPA is not making it's duty, that we are corrupt, because they can't accept
that situation of stray dogs in bucharest
begins to be resolved. That's their business.
What was ASPA's budget last year?
Razvan Bancescu: 1.6 million euros.
What did you make with this money?
We continued to invest in the Mihailesti shelter, salaries,
sanitary materials,veterinarians.
So you helped getting rid of how many dogs with these money?
6000 dogs last year.
Why do we build shelters for them when there is a law that
says they must be killed if they aren't adopted?
27:50 Razvan Bancescu: We need them to administrate this
problem. We need to catch over 180 dogs/day. We need space for them.
Adoptions help, they usually happen in the first 1,2,3 or 4
days after a dog has been caught.
(then they discuss a few seconds how adoptions rise and fall
each month)
Then both he and the show host says that the demonstrations
on the 8th of march were chosen badly because it was woman/mother's day and
also about a banner that said "Who the fuck is Ionut?"
29:35 This is not how you find ways to communicate with us.
There is nothing worse than what they did on the 8th of march.
From what i saw on facebook, there is a certain kind of
people who love dogs that don't accept any other rational arguments. For them
we are all criminals, they can't understand anything other than
sterilizations...Can it be done without killing?
Razvan Bancescu: a wise man from history said "to try
to make everyone happy you will fail". We need to satisfy 98.17% of people
who live in Bucharest.
Nobody will say on the street that they agree with the
killing. it's a taboo thing.
It's logical, there are thousands of dogs, what do we do
with them? any lowering of the catching rate means more and more generations
and we "feed" this marketing that caused us a lot of harm
internationally
What does that mean?
Well, i got messages from the ambassadors from all over Europe about the demonstrations happening there. Their
propaganda is full of lies.
What do they say about us?
31:40: Razvan Bancescu: That we started killing before the
norms were out, that we kill everything no matter what, that we don't handle
them with care. Pictures show up from the 90's, from other countries,etc
Show host: But they have a hero (he refers to Grivita) that
dog that got mutilated,
32:12 Razvan Bancescu: I Don't know how it happens but the
hero always shows up when they need to. From what i know about dogs, that dog
was mutilated long before the killing law appeared. Dogs are naturally curious
and keep getting their nose everywhere.
it looks like a petard did that, not a sword.
How many people take the law into their own hands? Do you
find dogs that have been killed?
Razvan Bancescu: Yes, sadly we find dogs that are poisoned.
We don't encourage that.
That's not how you resolve this issue.
i agree. i think the one who adopts and then abandons is
guilty in the same way as that who takes the law into his own hands and kills.
Razvan Bancescu: The problem is the abandonment rate, and i
am reffering here to dog breeds not only stray dogs. i saw aprox. 160 abandoned
german shepards, rottweilers,cockers,etc in the last 3 months. A dog is not a
gadget.
There are various reasons for abandonment: the changing of
the status of the family (someone dies, someone gets sick, a child is
born,etc), moving. Another special problem is with the dog breeders. There is
no control over them. They breed in consanguinity
even. These leads to diseases. I also had people phoned me to get them an
exactly same dog as the one they had. Also the pet shops, it's not normal for
dogs to be sold there.
Show host: Lets get
back to stray dogs. I have the following problem. I ride my bike with my kid. I
convince him very hard to do this because he is scared of dogs since when he
was biten. We pass by a factory. From that yard, each day 6-7 dogs attack me,
well..sort of, they bark at me. They don't catch me. i have speed and
experience, but it's stressful and it is even more stressful with a child.
I got the phone
number of the manager and called him and said to him to do something about
this. These dogs are usually kept there by guards to help them during the
night. What can i do as a citizen, attacked, against that company?
37:23 Razvan
Bancescu: Yes, we have more than 20 of these cases a day. We go there, the dogs
retreat on a private property and then the complaints start rolling.
By who? the
companies?
No, by the guards
helped by NGO's.
Show host: I used to
work as a night guard at a factory and i had 2 dogs but i kept them in the
shed/bay, they weren't getting out to bark at people in the tram station.
Razvan Bancescu:
There are companies that let loose their dogs at night but during the day they
keep them locked in kennels. This is what being responsible means. I never saw
there a free dog during the day.
Show host: But what
should i do if i get attacked at during the night?
Razvan Bancescu: The
best way to do it is this: complaint to the police, the police writes to the
administrator and the administrator contacts us and so we have the right to get
in there.
Show host: But i
don't have time to go to the police, to make a complaint...
Razvan Bancescu:
That is why we are preparing a resolution of the general council through that
will permit us to enter on terrains that permit the stray dogs to retreat
there, or dogs from those terrains who come into the public space.
Show host:The NGO's
will attack you that you are against the constitution.
Razvan: If they will
give us 6 months we will resolve this. After we finish cleaning up the center
of the town, we will go to the residential area.
This will be the
next target, the dogs that live on the premises, who don't have papers. They
retreat on private lands but do damages in public. Everything that concerns the
public safety is not negociable.
Show host: i know a
place with another pack of dogs, next to which a lady steps down from a very
expensive car (more than 50000 euros) with a large bag of food. Suddenly from
the open field 10+ dogs came. She was very happy, for her it was the greatest
thing.
But what about us
that come after her and don't have food?
Razvan Bancescu:
Feeding the stray dogs is the biggest mistake one can make. last year we
proposed to fine all those that feed dogs. All the NGO's yelled at us, they
said it's illegal, mr. Vadim came, mr. Marinescu came...
Show host: Mr. Marinescu should go knock on a door and
ask if the child there has a piece of meat like that
42:22 Razvan
Bancescu: He is not interested in that, it doesn't bring him notoriety.
I discussed this
thing with some psychologists and i asked them why are people doing this: They
said it's a substitute for endorphin and adrenaline.
It's sort of a
maternal instinct transferred to the dog.
Show host:You can't
fight with this. It's like with the drugs.
Bancescu: The
feeding of stray dogs can only be resolved with the "stake", a
metaphor for fines and strict regulations, this is how civilization begins.
By feeding them they
socialize and form packs.
Over 90% of the
attacks are made by sterilized dogs and people fed them\
Show host: I wonder
if the person feeding the dogs feels he has a guilty conscience?
No, if he had a
conscience he would have understood this.
Bancescu: When there
are injured people we can only think with the mind (rationaly)
Show host: When i
discuss with people on facebook all these rational arguments can't be
understood by them.
Bancescu: As i said,
you need a "stick", there is no other way.
Show host: I can't
believe that...
Razvan Bancescu: In
Berlin, in London,
you get fined if you feed the pigeons. All that food is a source for other
animals, rats for example, is about the safety of the town, it's a disease risk.
Show host: This year
you have 3 times more money than last year, how much time until you resolve
this problem? how long before i can be
sure that from my house to a park, i can go with my child, riding a bike, that i
won't be attacked.
47:22 Razvan
Bancescu: on the 31st of march 2015 this project will be finished, meaning 80%
of the dogs will be caught and there will be less than 10% of the current bites
reports. We now have 67% less bites than last year.
Show host: there is
another thing that nobody cares about, all of these animals pee and poo on the
street where we walk
Razvan Bancescu: We
will have statistics regarding this from Victor Babes institute.
Show host: Thank you
everyone for watching. Tonight we discussed about stray dogs with ASPA representative
Razvan Bancescu. Tomorrow night....get ready for this...especially I...we will
have as a guest a lady from CUTU CUTU association.
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