A while back, Denver banned politically incorrect dogs and that ban was suspended by state legislation restricting breed specific legislation. Denver sued to reinstate the ban and won. A court ruled that Denver was, basically, not subject to the state law because of home rule. In other words, Denver was its own country.

The breed ban has resumed and Denver has started rounding up family pets and killing them. It is abysmal:

Yet here we have the city of Denver, newly sprung from legislative and judicial restraint, rounding up pits over the past couple of days and killing them like rats during The Plague.

A uniformed officer arrives at a home. “I’ll get him,” she announces to her partner. Rather than fight it all, a distraught man emerges, weighs going to jail and a fine, and in the end hands over his dog.

“I’m definitely sad,” he later tells a reporter. “He’s like a member of my family.”

Later in the day, a woman pleads: “I don’t have no dogs!

“There ain’t no dogs in the basement!” she yells as the uniformed man and woman, responding to an informant’s report of a pit bull, interrogate her. Outside, squad cars filled with police officers wait to see if they are needed.

“I’m just doing my job,” the woman officer later laments.

One vet is trying to make a difference by shipping pits out of Denver but, sadly, he notes:

“We would absolutely love to be the Underground Railroad for pit bulls, but we know the city would close us down.”

The article closes with:

What happens, I ask, when all of the Denver pit bulls have been rounded up and put down?

He would not want to be a Malamute, he said.

A male Malamute attacked and killed a 7-year-old girl in Fruita last Saturday night.

“It is not the breed,” an unsmiling Bill Suro said.

Radley Balko on Breed Specific Legislation:

Breed-specific legislation is overly emotional, ineffective, and inhumane. The entire city of Denver ought to be ashamed of its public officials. Pit-bulls make up a disproportionate percentage of vicious dogs that attack humans and other dogs because people who breed vicious dogs happened to favor pit-bulls (actually, that’s not even true any more. Rottweilers surpassed pit-bulls a few years ago as the breed with the most-reported dog-on-man attacks). You can train a poodle to kill if you’re so inclined. Ban pit-bulls and dogfight enthusiasts will simply pick another breed.

Irresponsible owners will just switch breeds. You’ll get my dogs from my cold dead hands.

Update: Jacob Grier has some numbers:

If history is any indication, this is going to mean a lot of dogs will get a lethal injection. In 2003 Denver put down 410 pit bulls and returned 240 to owners with the promise that they would be relocated immediately. Yet despite the bloodbath, city officials estimate that there were still 4,500 pit bulls illegally owned at the peak of enforcement. The prohibition didn’t work, but a lot of innocent dogs were killed and many privacies were violated.

He also notes that the most dangerous breed changes over time, something I’ve addressed before. And addresses how the popularity of a breed tends to correlate to the dog related fatalities.

Posted in uncategorized on May 12th, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |