Merseyside Police ‘Dangerous’ Dogs Amnesty Claims 86
Published on February 14, 2007 by Ryan O'Meara · 5 Commentswritten by Hamish Lazari
“We are grateful to all of you for putting the safety of your children and the people of Merseyside ahead of the affection for your dog.” - Assistant Chief Constable Helen King Merseyside Police
Merseyside Police received more than 600 calls during the week-long illegal dog hand in as the police styled the local dog amnesty in the Merseyside area. The police claim that a number of calls have come from owners of illegal dogs themselves who wanted to take the opportunity to stay within the law, even though presumably the very owning of a dog that Merseyside Police Dog Identification Officers decided was illegal was therefore outside the law, is this a classic catch 22 situation?
Nine of the dog owners opted to take their case to the courts, which will decide whether the dogs will be placed on the Index of Exempted Dogs.
Bizarrely Merseyside Police themselves claim to have ‘seized’ 86 dogs whilst still calling the operation a ‘hand-in’, if you voluntarily give something to someone, have they seized it off you?
Police claim that more calls had been received from people who were unsure about the type of dog they have and dog identification officers had been able to reassure 132 owners that their animal does not fall under the legislation? Did the dog identification officers use the fabled ‘tests’ to determine the dogs were illegal or did they use the Home Office guidelines?
Although the week long hand-in/amnesty has now ended, the police have advised dog owners who called in but were not dealt with that the police will be in contact with them to arrange a visit. If this occurs next week or even at the end of this week, has the so called seven day dog hand-in, become a 10 day or even two week hand-in?
ACC King added “our dog handlers and dog identification officers have spent a lot of time with owners and approached each visit with great sensitivity. We appreciate that this has not been an easy task for them and we are proud of them for their hard work and professionalism.”
Merseyside police on their own website cited dogs of the Pit Bull Type rather than the American Pit Bull Terrier alongside the other proscribed dog breeds such as the Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasiliera and the Japanese Tosa.
Amongst the appended explanation of the Pit Bull Type it actually had written words to the effect that Pit Bull Types are also known as Irish Staffordshire Bull Terriers and Blue Stafford’s etc, where did this information come from? There are many websites for Irish Staffordshire Bull Terriers, so is it an unofficial unrecognised in the UK at least breed, but a separate breed descended from traditional Staffordshire Bull Terriers?
If Irish Staffordshire Bull Terriers are indeed unconnected with Pit Bull Type dogs, why did Merseyside Police include them on the description?
Have all the ‘seized’ dogs less the 9 whose owners want to go through the court system been euthanized by the police or are they being held somewhere?
Like all kinds of amnesties the really dangerous people do not come forward and will still need to be tracked down by the police. Dog owners who have believed themselves to have acted responsibly by complying with the police’s request have handed over their dogs to be destroyed. This however may have been the only option open to them considering the number of calls made to the police reporting illegal type dogs in the community and the somewhat hysterical reporting of the local press.
Now that this ‘hand-in’, amnesty or whatever you want to call it has ended let us all hope that there is not one coming to a neighbourhood near us soon!
If there was ever an urgent need for deed specific legislation being introduced and the appalling Dangerous Dogs Act to be either scrapped or amended this is it.
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Tags: Dangerous Dogs
Quite frankly, any dog owner who’d just hand in his or her dog to be killed is the precise reason why dog ownership, itself, is all too often unethical.
When legislators pass laws requiring harmless dogs to be muzzled, dog owners just obey, rather than fight or move. They betray their dogs. (…With the possible exception of those continuing to fight very, very hard…I suppose. Still, they should never, ever muzzle a friendly, harmless dog just because someone tells them to.)
I used to ask the obvious next question which is, if people will barbarically muzzle harmless innocent dogs because some fool tells them to, would they kick their teeth out, too? Would they beat their dogs once a day, if that became “the law”?
If you’re horrified by this analogy or if you think it’s too far fetched, the answer has already be given.
Dog owners will actually condemn their harmless, innocent pets to death, on some politician’s say so, and nothing more.
So obviously they probably would beat them if told to. They probably would have all their teeth removed, if told to. They think nothing of treating their dogs in the most inhumane, unethical, and barbaric ways imaginable to me, for no other reason than the stupidity of some legislators and citizens.
I got a lot of flack when I said I hoped that (just about) every animal rescued from hurricane Katrina in America should not go back to their owners. The simple reason is that those people abandoned those animals to die in a hurricane. Some even left them chained or penned, giving them almost no chance of survival. Anyone who would do that should never be able to own an animal again for the rest of their natural lives.
And I feel the same way about most people who blindly abide by unethical, offensive, insulting, pointless, and cruel public policy.
If you’d kill your dog because someone simply tells you to, please don’t get another animal…ever.
“We are grateful to all of you for putting the safety of your children and the people of Merseyside ahead of the affection for your dog.” – Assistant Chief Constable Helen King Merseyside Police
This is what actually creeps me out. Goebbels himself couldn’t do better (and don’t give me that Godwin’s thing, it’s not relevant).
As you point out, it’s the law-abiding dog owners who are punished by laws which presume criminality in the absence of any wrondgoing, based solely on the physical appearance of otherwise universally legal property.
It’s distressing to find people complying so willingly, handing in their lovely dogs at the behest of self-serving, ignorant, duplicitous politicians. I’m amazed at the acquiescence of not only the targeted owners, but of dog owners in general who won’t stand up for their fellows.
This era will likely be judged harshly in future, just as persecution, scapegoating and propaganda playing to a mob mentality in other centuries are viewed with horror by thinking people today.
Makes you realize how easy it is to manipulate the public though, doesn’t it?
Oops. Sorry about the italics. Forgot to turn them off.
I live in the States in Kansas City, Kansas where I believe many of the cities in the UK and Ireland followed with glee our pitbull amnesty program this summer. I have read how a city in Ireland even commented that our amnesty program was good policy to be emulated in their community.
The whole incident that even prompted our mayor, to propose such insanity was spurred on by the death of a woman by a neighbor’s dog that was severly neglected and abused. The dog had not been fed or watered in weeks. The mayor totally ignored and threw up a smokescreen over the ineptness of our animal control department. It turns out the victim herself had called many times to AC to report viscious dogs. The dog owner had a long criminal history, drugs, assaulting a police officer and prior animal abuse and neglect charges which resulted in death of his previous dogs. In fact the dog owner was in jail at the time of the incident on drug charges. So no one was even feeding or watering the dogs and our temperatures were running in the high 90′s to 100 degrees F. The elderly woman who died, actually had a heart condition and died of a heart attack first from the dog jumping the fence. The dog did maul the woman after she had already died from the heart attack. To this day many of the victim’s neighbors aren’t even sure if the dog’s breed was a pit bull.
During our 2 week pit bull amnesty our AC picked up around 200 PBs. Some of those PBs were tiny puppies only 6-8 weeks old. How on earth could those puppies be declared viscious? Many of the owners that turned in their dogs were so foolish as to believe their dogs were being rehomed!! What none of these owners even thought about is that the way our laws read they were never even afforded due process in the court system.
I met one owner who turned in his PB’s and I asked him why he turned in this dogs? Without very much emotion of a true dogowner, he replied “Well they were illigeal”. This man happened to be black, did he forget all that his race had gone through and fought for in civil rights? He just handed over his dogs because some outdated 18 year old PB ban on the books that never solved any of the problems our city’s AC had in the first place and because our Mayor Reardon was too lazy to get to the root of the problem, dictated that citizens turn in their dogs to solve a problem.
But not all citizens blindly turned in their dogs, some people got their dogs out of the city and even moved to a more sensible city. I applaud and admire those dog owners who took a stance and said to our AC and police I am not giving up my dog.
Isnt it about time that people are made responsible for thier dogs actions? after all it is usually due to the ineptness and plain ignorance of many dog owners yet it is always the dog that is punished. People should be made to join a dog training class and anyone not looking after thier pet sufficiently, exercising it and providing adequate socialisation and mental stimulation should be held accountable. the lad whos dangerous dog maulled his own neice and mother at Christimas made me sick with his typical chavvy jogging suit and trainers, he is the typical example of the very people we dont want owning a dog of any sort and have the police charged him for killing his own neice, no of course they havent, they would rather punish the dog who has been trained by the OWNER to fight and kill – he should be hung out to dry as an example to many other ruthless and undeserving onwers of dogs and its about time we looked at the OTHER end of the leash. The police are so stupid and out of touch and here is yet another example. For anyone who is being threatened with thier innocent dog being removed and killed should say “NO” its within your rights to do so and our dogs need to be portected from idiotic, needless, useless laws such as the dangerous dogs act that was rushed through, it needs to be changed to the dangerous owners act but then again, we cant put down these owners so easily as the dogs but I wish we could!