Responding to the outcries of some animal advocacy groups, Montgomery County Police are now searching for a new director for the county’s Animal Services division who will come from outside the police force.

Division director Capt. Harold Allen said there’s a 50-50 split in the animal control community about whether this is a wise move. He believes a committed expert can be a great benefit, though.

“We have a trend in the police department of rotating managers quite often so that people are familiar with a variety of police positions,” he told The Examiner on Wednesday.

The tactic effectively exposes personnel to a variety of law enforcement areas, Allen said, yet it’s not the ideal way to run an animal control department, which he said should employ people with animal expertise.

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The so-called civilianization of animal control functions is designed to hire someone with more specialized knowledge, rather than the police captains who have tackled the leadership role over the past few decades.

Information about the number of applicants for the Animal Services directorship as well as how close to a hiring decision officials were was unavailable Wednesday.

But police Chief Thomas Manger said in an e-mail that his department is gathering input from citizens about ways to reshape the Animal Services department and who should lead it.

For years, animal services fell to the Department of Environmental Protection until the late 1970s when a separate animal control department was created to investigate animal cruelty complaints and protect the public from dangerous animals.

In fiscal 1996, however, former County Executive Doug Duncan proposed and won support for an idea to move animal control function to a new division within law enforcement.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com