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Date Posted: 06:51:23 04/14/02 Sun
Author: Peggy for Laurel
Subject: Update: Kent County/Grand Rapids, MI

Interesting week here. Sat in on the city commission's public safety (sub) committee meeting Tuesday morning and found that those three commissioners do not seem to have any real interest in breed bans anymore.

The City Attorney presented them with the non breed specific dangerous dog ordinance which they asked him to draft about two weeks ago after first telling him, two months ago, to do a outright ban and a second version that delt with dangerous dogs but identified APBT and AM Staffs as inherently dangerous dogs.

His memo, prefacing the dangerous dog ordinance, was something that we could have written ourselves....he told them to continue to work with the county to get the enforcement personnel that are seriously lacking, to use the AVMA's Community Approach to Bite Prevention that we've been asking for and to appoint to the task force animal behavioralists, animal owners, community representatives and public safety personnel to work on the public awareness and education that is needed.

He made it clear that the best course of action would be to repeal the city's own, ancient, animal ordinance and not enact any new law but let the county law rule in the city limits and then work with the county to get the enforcement personnel we've needed for years.

The city has the option of contracting with the county and paying for a dedicated patrol in the city. The ciy commissioners would clearly prefer that the county foot the whole bill, as animal control is a county function, but it sounds like they might be willing to consider the contractual arrangement if it is the only way to quickly improve the services in the city.

In the end, the PSC really didn't even go through or discuss any of the three versions of the ban / dangerous dog ordinances they had asked the city attorney to prepare.

That night, at the full city commission meeting, we presented the petitions, with 1342 signatures of county residents, out of which 854 were city residents as well. Two of the trainers, four pitbull owners who've been working with us and myself spoke. Another woman I've never seen before got up and told them that parents had to teach their kids to stay out of other people's yards. No one was there from the opposition.

The Mayor, who had been spouting about pitbulls as vicious dogs with locking jaws two months ago, said no such thing this week. He said that they were working on solutions and that there were no quick fixes and they wanted something that would be fair to everyone and effective. He advised everyone to be sure and discuss enforcement with their county commissioners, reminding the audience that all of the county commissioners were up for re-election this year.

The day before the commission meeting, there was an article in the paper with the headline "Authorities have teeth to handle bad dogs, critics say" and under that "Animal Control Experts and those in government argue that the problem isn't as simple as banning a certain breed".

The neighborhood association organizer who started the campaign to ban breeds is quoted as saying "I don't care what they do, the residents don't care, they just want enforcement. They want it to stop."

One county commissioner who had appeared at that Neighborhood Association's meeting about banning pitbulls, telling about a frightening experience his brother had with a neighbor's two pitbulls, is now advocating increased enforcement and education. He is quoted as saying "We also need to take what I consider a holistic approach in dealing with dangerous and aggressive dogs. We need to put our resources into education and make sure that our existing ordinances and laws are strictly enforced."

This all seems rather incredible at the moment, but they do seem to be getting the message.

If this attitude continues with the city commission, we'll be able to concentrate our attention on the county commissioners. Funding for the increased staffing Animal Control has to have is going to be a major challenge and we still have some county commissioners who represent urban districts who have a distorted view of the APBT and Am Staffordshire Terriers we will have to contend with.

The situation gets a little more complicated in that the non urban commissioners don't really see a big problem. They may simply let their more passionate collegues have their way or they may act as a brake on them, hard to predict. In any case, we still have our work cut out for us. The county needs to leave their laws alone until such time as they will fund enough staff positions to enforce them. There may be room for some changes later on, but it would be stupid to make them until there is someone to enforce them. Hopefully, we don't get bogged down in a fight between the city and the county over who is going pay what.

Meanwhile, city staff is setting up some "cross-training" for police and animal control officers to facilitate better coorperation, I got a call today to attend a meeting next week they are putting together to figure out how to use the city's Safe Kids, Safe Homes program to do bite prevention education and I also heard from a member of our local obedience club that they are going to be getting copies of the AKC's Dog Safety video in the hands of the neighborhood associations and helping train them to teach kids how not to be victims.

There is another woman who came up to me after the city commission meeting and said she'd like to get involved with bite prevention education in the schools and I think she is going to be used to promote Animal Control's bite prevention program to the schools. AC has a good program, but the schools haven't been interested. I think part of the problem is that they just send out a newsletter to the schools and if someone takes on the job of selling the schools, I think we could get a better reception for AC's program.

I think our next step is going to be an organizational meeting for the committee. We need to map a strategy for the county commission, keep up with the city and fine tune our recommendations. A lot of new ideas have been coming, the more people we talk to, ranging from how to increase license sales to the idea of a volunteer animal control auxillary unit to back up the police until the county gets their funding act together.

(I suspect AC would faint, but hey, they still have volunteer firefighters and EMTs in some parts of the county and the auxillary Sheriff's unit, so it doesn't seem all that absurd. Especially if it means our police could stop shooting dogs because there is no AC officer around and they don't know what else to do and have no equipment.)

And, we have to follow up on our press releases to the public affairs directors, children's programers and health editiors at the local TV, radio and newspaper. We gave them five pages of bite prevention related story ideas and local contact people, we have to try to make sure they use it.

All in all, we've made some progress. It certainly isn't over, not by a long shot, but we're moving forward.

Laurel
Grand Rapids, MI

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