Yakima, WA - Wasted Resources Don't Improve Public Safety

Last week, KIMA TV in Yakima, WA ran a story about Yakima's 20 year old ban on 'pit bulls'.

In spite of the city's ban, Animal Control officers are reporting that pit bulls are filling up the city's shelter -- to the tune of about one pit bull arriving per day. With a 20 year old ban, one would think that a working ordinance would have eliminated all pit bulls from the community.

But it hasn't. There are still many.

What makes the problem even worse is the wasted time spent by animal control officers on calls made about pit bulls that weren't really pit bulls.

"It would free up a lot of our time," said ACO Ben Zigan. "Because a lof the calls we get about pit bulls turn out not to be pit bulls." 

 So, in other words, calls that they're responding to about "illegal pit bulls" turn out to not be illegal dogs...which wastes the time of animal control officers on dogs that are not aggressive. How much better would their time be spent just showing up on calls to deal with aggressive dogs, regardless of breed, than on 'pit bulls' that are neither pit bulls nor aggressive? 

Meanwhile, this is the same community, that just over a year ago, was discussing potentially updating its pit bull ban to included addtional breeds of dogs that had become problems because of a rash of dog attacks that happened in the city.

The problem was never the breed of dog involved. It's always the owners.  And until we get to the point where we focus our animal control resources (which are always limited) on the reckless owners, instead of chasing dogs that weren't a problem but some civilian thought resembled a pit bull, cities will never succeed in dealing with the problem of biting dogs in their communities.

Hat tip on the story to StopBSL.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I'm still trying to figure out why so many communities are measuring a breed ban's "success" by every factor except, you know, reduction of dog bites.

We see the policy-makers trumpeting similar so-called "successes" in Omaha, Denver, and Lucas County, OH. As if writing tons of citations and euthanizing thousands of dogs are guaranteed to make us safe from vicious dogs.

But, shhh, don't talk about their dog bite stats.

Rock on, Brent!

[Brent Toellner]

Add to that Jennife even the places like Council Bluffs, IA, who insist that their law has been a success because pit bull bites have gone down. It's like they've ignored what everyone has told them that it is an owner issue and not a dog issue, and when these idiots own other breeds of dogs they will then become problems. So Council Bluffs gets pit bull bites to go down, but bites by other large breeds grow to replace them and total bites have not changed. Is that success? No. But at some point these people have quit being about public safety and more about defending their point of view.

[Jennifer]

Very interesting topic.

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