Merseyside Police Spend Nearly £1m of Tax Payer’s Money on ‘Dangerous Dog’ Campaign
According to figures obtained under Freedom of Information by Endangered Dogs Defence & Rescue (EDDR), Merseyside Police have spent a total of £963,167 on kenneling, vet treatment and legal bills associated with the seizure of dogs in relation to section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act.Nearly £1m of tax payer’s money has been used between 2006 and 2009 (to date) by the Police force who, in 2007 seized 128 dogs, in 2008 seized 145 dogs and, at time of reporting, have seized 35 dogs in 2009. A total of 308 dogs in 2 and half years.
Section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act has been widely criticised as being unfair, ineffective and hugely costly to the tax payer for little or no return on investment.
It calls for dogs that look a certain way to be legislated against (breed specific legislation) regardless of whether those dogs have ever acted dangerously or aggressively in their lives.
In 2008, the Metropolitan Police in London attended the Nottinghill Carnival pre-armed with seizure notices, taking people’s dogs from them if those dogs fit a certain physical description. In a lot of cases, the owners went through a court process to have their dogs returned to them, dogs that were badly traumatised by their experience of being forcibly taken from their owners – all at a cost to the tax payer.
The UK has not been able to drive down the dog attack figures since the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991 was introduce by Lord Baker. In fact, since his law was passed, dog attacks and death by dog attack has grown year on year.
The news that Merseyside Police have spent a fraction under £1m of tax payer’s money inside just 2 and half years is sure to provoke questions from campaigners who have long since claimed that the Dangerous Dogs Act has been an unmitigated failure and waste of public money – on top of the serious animal welfare implications of the much maligned law.
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Just to clarify, this Force has led the way in trying to create a much more humane way of dealing with the dogs. The vast majority of those section 1 dogs reported to them are now left at home.
Further to that, this years figure is mainly made up of section 3 dogs not section 1.
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From the FOI
“As at 18th May 2009, 23 dogs were held by Merseyside Police under Section 1 of the Act, and 4 dogs were held under Section 3″
Thats quite a few more section one than 3.
Also another FOI showed that from sep 08 to end of feb 09 Mp held 31 section 1 compared with just 2 section 3 for the same time period.
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I just read on one of the above links about Oscar again who was killed by mistake by the merseyside police, that is so awful, poor family, what a terrible thing to happen.
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Wow that is a load of cash been spent of enforcing breed ban law! What a waste of public money bsl is, shocking.
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