ZAGREB, March 18, 2018 – About 300 residents of the eastern city of Osijek rallied outside the county police department on Sunday, protesting against a recent case of suspected intentional mass poisoning of dogs and pigeons in the city.
The rally was organised through social networks and the protesters demanded that the police show them recordings from city surveillance cameras in order to identify the perpetrator and that relevant services establish faster what kind of poison had been used, instead of making the public wait for the results of toxicology tests for a week, as announced by police on Friday.
Demanding to talk to Mayor Ivan Vrkić, the protesters said that this was not only an attack on animals, but on people as well, and that, apart from Osijek, cases of animal poisoning had been reported in some other cities, too.
Deputy Mayor Boris Piložota promised the protesters that the results of testing of the suspicious substance found in the city would be known on Monday or Tuesday.
As for the protesters’ demand to inspect recordings from city surveillance cameras, Piližota said that the police, responding to a similar request in an earlier case, said that they had to be presented with an official order to make the recordings available.
The owner of a local veterinary station Ivan Sesar said that since Friday the service had received 84 reports from citizens about animal poisoning, that samples had been collected and sent for analysis, and that the findings were expected on Monday or Tuesday.
The head of the county police department Ladislav Bece told reporters that the collected samples had been sent to the Forensic Science Centre Ivan Vučetić in Zagreb for toxicological analysis and that the results would be known in two days’ time.
