Aurora (CO) continues to look at loosening breed restrictions, media perpetuates fuzzy math

On Thursday, Aurora, CO will again discuss loosening the restrictions on their 5 year old breed ban. The city is looking at this after the Department of Justice filed a ruling on the Americans with Disabilities Act on breed bans not being able to limit access to those with service dogs.  This made Aurora's ban in violation of the ADA.  While Denver refused to make the necessary changes to their law, Aurora is looking at loosening their restrictions to become ADA compliant.  

Meanwhile, instead of looking at ways to loosen the restrictions, they should be just looking at a full-on repeal of their law that bans 10 different breeds of dogs.   Unfortunately, the city administration continues to ignore their own numbers and pretend they don't exist -- while the news media allows them to do it.

Last month, City Councilman Bob Broom said that "Statistics show that the number of bites have gone way down," which, well, is wrong. The reality is that they have actually gone up significantly.

In the most recent article, the Denver Post tries to help them defend the breed bans by noting that in 2005, there were 35 dog bites regarding restricted breeds.  In 2010, there were only 6.  These numbers are accurate enough, but ignored that there were 188 bites by non-restricted breeds - -up from 110 in 2005.

Oops.

But then it's become commonplace for city leaders who support breed bans (and it has trickled over to the fear-mongering websites as well) to say that, well, severe bites are down because the restricted breeds bite harder.  Aurora has stated this also.

However, the numbers don't support that either as in 2006, restricted breeds made up 8% of the severe bites, and 10% of the moderate bites and in 2007, when severe bites went up (2 years after the breed ban), they made up 6% of the severe bites and 7% of the moderate ones. So for the first two years of the ban, moderate and severe bites went up -- but not because of the restricted breeds, which were never a high percentage of these bites, but because of the non-restricted breeds.

So the city council continues to try to justify their law -- even to the point of hiding and making up numbers to support themselves.  And even though all of these numbers are available to the public, the mainstream media has yet to pick them up and make them widely available....thus allowing the city to waste taxpayer dollars and give the city free-reign to harrass pet owners and people with service dogs of a particular type.

It's time for the city council to own up to their mistake and fix it...and for the mainstream media to do what they are supposed to do which is hold city officials accountable.

More from Stop BSL who has a great and even deeper breakdown of all the numbers -- including links to the dog bite severity numbers which I hadn't seen before.

 

Comments

[EmilyS]

and let's not forget another essential point: "breed" identification is completely untrustworthy. The whole basis for the statistics is on shaky ground.

[Jennifer]

Thanks for covering this, Brent! There are a rare few cities where the councilmembers and city officials are so determined to save face that they intentionally ignore or distort their own data. Aurora is one of them.

[kmk]

to quote a famous Missouri resident (other than myself, LOL) - "Lies, d****d lies, and statistics".

My brother-in-law told me recently that he hated statistics because you could manipulate data and pretty much get the answer you wanted. When cities claim "the BSL is working - we have fewer bites" but ignore the fact that bites by all breeds almost always go up, they are manipulating data.

As my husband always says, "I sprayed the yard with elephant repellant, and look - no elephants. It's working!"

I'll need to find out what happened with a friend of ours who is a mail carrier in Independence, MO, which has BSL. She was chased by a dog that's a "frequent flyer" with animal control (a mutt) and she managed to get her mailbag between her and the dog. Animal control was called but did not respond and her husband was ready to kick you know what and take names.

:-)