Lansford Borough will be looking at ways to address dangerous dog issues, after a pit bull attacked and killed two dogs a week and a half ago.

Councilman Bruce Markovich, who sits on the zoning and ordinance committee, said the borough needs to act to give their police some authority to impound a potentially dangerous dog.

“I think we need to look at enacting some type of ordinance that when you have a situation like this, when a dog is a clear and present danger to the public, which this dog definitely was, even after the first time that our police department has some kind authority to take that dog into custody and impound it somewhere,” he said.

Under state law, Markovich explained that the owner has to be convicted of a summary offense before being charged with a misdemeanor for the second offense, he said.

“But there’s no provisions that allow the police officers to take that dog away from the owner,” Markovich said. “Unfortunately, the way this is going to work is this guy is going to get a fine for this, and that’s going to be the extent of it.”

Under state law, a local district judge must declare a dog a danger, and that hasn’t happened, Markovich said.

“This dog isn’t considered a danger at this point, because there hasn’t been a hearing in front of a local district judge for him to make that determination,” he explained.

Councilwoman Michele Bartek said that the dog should have been confined for 10 days following the first attack, which happened March 28. But the dog was out and attacked another dog four days later.

Bartek pointed to a leash law, and Markovich and others said this dog had a leash on when it attacked the other dogs.

Bartek said video that she saw showed the young girl leashing the dog afterward. Other reports stated the dog broke away from the girl who was walking it.

“I think we need to try to find something when this happens again, and it’s going to happen again, we all know that,” Markovich said. “It could have been two little kids, instead of two little dogs.

“We need to find something that is going to allow us to keep this from happening a second time,” he said.

Council President Joe Genits said that they should put the state requirements into its local ordinance, which was recently updated but should have been clearer.