Priorities

I never cease to be amazed at how some government folks determine their priorities for spending resources to create safety.

Yesterday, the city of Merseyside started their own amnesty program where people were allowed to bring in their illegal "dangerous dogs" into the government to be killed.   This amnesty program comes following the death of a five-year-old Merseyside girl (Ellie Lawrenson)was killed by her uncle's pit bull on New Year's Day.

One thing that I do want to note here, in case you missed the news on this, Ellie's uncle was a formerly convicted felon, who was caught with drugs and drug money in his home at the time -- oh, and was found to be part of a drug ring and dog fighting ring.

So, instead of spending resources going out and dealing with the drug problems and the dog fighting rings, they're focusing on an amnesty program.  The idea came to them based off the praised success of a similar program in nearby Belfast.  Never mind that in the 2 weeks of Belfast's program, they had 61 dogs brought in, only 15 of them were actually dogs that were banned according to the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991.  Yip, that's less that 25% of the dogs being brought in and inspected actually being illegal. 

If the resources used for such Amnesty programs were actually used to find and convict drug dealers and dog fighters, strangely, they're "dangerous dog problem" would go away.  Instead, they deal with the symptoms of the problem first instead of addressing the primary problem.

Those are screwed up priorities.  And citizens should demand better.