Ed Jamison, the man who oversees Dallas' animals, has a video he shows when he's discussing dangerous dogs. In this surveillance footage, captured from a front-porch cam four days before Christmas last year, a postal carrier is seen delivering mail in a quiet residential neighborhood off Jim Miller and Lake June roads in southeast Dallas. Two dogs — one dark and one white, both weighing around 50 pounds — appear out of nowhere and knock the carrier off his feet. Mail goes flying as he takes a tumble and the dogs attack — again and again and again in the course of a mere 37 seconds.

The carrier, Jamison told me this week, was "badly hurt" — so badly, in fact, he needed surgery, which he skipped in order to testify against the owners during an administrative hearing. The dogs were turned over to Dallas Animal Services and euthanized after that hearing. But nothing happened to their owners, who simply handed over the dogs to city officials and walked away.

There was no ticket, no fine, no record of the owner possessing dangerous dogs. No court order, either, prohibiting that owner from getting more dogs — and more and more, as many as he wants — who might one day hurt someone else.

"Our hands are tied," said Jamison, who came to Dallas from Cleveland eight months ago to fix a broken department that could not, or would not, get a handle on vicious packs of wild dogs roaming southern Dallas. "That seems to be the cycle here: The animal pays the ultimate price, and the owner who allowed it to get into that situation, nothing happens."

This could change before June's end — could and should. Because right now, a dog can jump the fence and bite a person or kill another animal, and the worst thing that will happen is the bad dog is put to sleep. Which is insane.

"There is obviously something wrong with that," said Animal Advisory Commission chair Peter Brodsky.

Since February, Jamison and the Dangerous Dog Task Force have been working to amend a section of city code to include rules for owning such beasts — and punishments for those who allow their animals to get loose and hurt people. Should the Dallas City Council sign off on the ordinance, which sailed through the animal commission Tuesday, there would be fines — up to $500 for a Class C misdemeanor.

And, for the first time, a judge could choose to ban someone from owning a dangerous dog for some length of time. Which would have been nice back when Sean Baugh was toting Lamb of God all over town, racking up complaints but little else.

Jamison had a vicious-dog law during his days in Cleveland and could't believe Dallas did not — especially since this is the city where, two years ago this month, Antoinette Brown was torn apart by a pack of wild dogs in a neighborhood near Fair Park. And just last month, in the very same neighborhood where Brown was killed, a woman named Veronica Yarbough was similarly attacked by four dogs, including two pit bull terriers.

The owner of those dogs surrendered them and was given 16 citations — a dozen of which had to do with things like failure to vaccinate, sterilize or microchip. But once the dogs were dead, the citations were tossed.

"We can can write tickets for barking dogs," Jamison said, "but not biting."

There's already a dangerous dog definition in Texas's Health and Safety Code. It's pretty straightforward: A dog's dangerous if it gets out of its enclosure or off its leash and hurts someone who didn't deserve it. The state's fine with someone owning a dangerous dog, so long as that dog's registered with the city, the owner has at least $100,000 worth of insurance and that dog is always kept in the house or on a leash.

Which sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

The city's new regs would make it more troublesome. There would be a citywide registry posted online so you could see if you live near a dangerous dog. You couldn't take a dangerous dog out of the house without a muzzle. If your dangerous dog does wind up in animal service's possession, you have 15 days to get into compliance, or that dog's going to die, because the shelter's at capacity and doesn't have space to waste on dogs that bite.

That all received the commission's support before they sent it to the council, which should vote by June's end.

Only thing some members didn't love was the fact we're not going to punish owners of animals who bite or kill other animals, which was actually the most common complaint during spring public meetings. Aggressive dogs will be seized, and their owners will be forced to comply with all the ownership rules required to keep dangerous dogs. But no fines. Not yet. Jamison said that's coming.

"I'm just glad I am a marathon runner, because this is not going to be a sprint," Jamison said. "Not just one thing that can happen when you're dealing with the animal world. We're past the animal problem. It's the human part now."

Bad humans, specifically. With bad dogs, bad dogs.