It’s a Friday morning in mid-April and Oakland Animal Control officers Celeste Beas and Ashley Mitchell are driving through deep East Oakland. They’re responding to a call that one of their colleagues, Maya Sandifer sorts through at the office on 29th Avenue to set their priorities for the day.
The women are part of a small team of five officers who handle all the animal-related calls that come through the Oakland Police Department’s non-emergency line, as well as their own.
The officers work in two shifts between 7 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., seven days a week. A sixth officer’s position is close to being filled, according to Joe DeVries, director of Oakland Animal Services, which oversees the Animal Control division, and a seventh will be posted if Mayor Barbara Lee’s proposed budget is adopted…