Town of Islip shelter accused of wrongly refusing to return dog
Eto is a special imported Belgian Malinois dog that can be worth up to $40,000 and is the type of canine favored by the U.S. Secret Service.
And the man who says he is Eto’s owner wants to know why the Town of Islip gave him away to a retired NYPD police officer after the dog ended up in the local animal shelter.
“I just want the dog back,” Clifton Benjamin, a Transportation Security Administration canine handler at Kennedy Airport who also runs a private dog training business, said Monday outside his home in Brentwood.
To back up his point, he and his attorney filed a $1 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Town of Islip, demanding it pay him damages and return 2-year-old Eto.
The Town of Islip denied any wrongdoing, and said Benjamin didn’t have proof the dog is his.
Benjamin “had no physical paperwork in his name, and what he did have, included inaccurate information including a chip number that did not match the chip number in the dog,” the town said in a statement. “This is a frivolous lawsuit and will be vigorously defended by the Town of Islip.”
Benjamin said that, through a business partner, he imported the black and tan purebred from the Netherlands in 2018. He said he paid about $2,000 for a dog that eventually could be worth much more after it is trained.
Clifton Benjamin of Brentwood says he provided proof that Eto was his after the Belgian Malinois dog slipped his collar and ended up in the Town of Islip Animal Shelter. Credit: Barry Sloan
One day in September 2018 a friend was walking Eto around the neighborhood when the canine slipped his collar and ran away, Benjamin and his attorney, Vesselin Mitev of Miller Place, said.
Benjamin soon got word that the dog was being held at the Town of Islip Animal Shelter in Bay Shore. He showed up, said the dog was his, and that he wanted him back, he said.
He showed what he said were papers including a “pet passport,” bill of sale, shipping and tracking information, and vaccination records that proved the canine was his. But it led to a long back-and-forth with the town that even involved the town attorney, he said.
Eventually, town officials told him the dog had been adopted out. On Friday, after several previous legal steps, he filed the lawsuit.
“It’s been frustrating,” he said. “They just keep on brushing me off. It was just the runaround.”
The town said, “There were multiple claims for the dog, none of whom could prove ownership.” It also said Benjamin “admitted to giving the dog to a third party” and that the retired police officer who adopted Eto has “no relationship to the Town of Islip.”
Mitev, the attorney, said of the retired cop: “We hope that person does the right thing and gives the dog back to its rightful owner.”
