The Jackson City Council Rules Committee, spurred by the recent death of 5-year-old Terry resident Anastasia Bingham from a pit-bull attack, voted Monday to ask the city's legal department to write an ordinance banning pit bulls dog inside the city limits, and to consider a second ordinance giving police officers more discretion in handling complaints against dogs.
Ward 1 Councilman Jeff Weill, Ward 2 Councilman Chokwe Lumumba and Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon asked the city's Deputy Attorney James Anderson to look into a law similar to breed-banning laws Ridgeland city leaders enacted.
Police Deputy Chief Gerald Jones, who previously presided over the city's animal-control division, said police now have limited power to deal with most animal complaints.
"Most of the calls the city has received concerning animals deals with barking dogs, not biting dogs, and that is a difficult issue to enforce because if the animal is in the owner's private property, then that's a privacy issue," Jones told members of the committee. He added that most reported incidents of biting dogs involve animals that have never left their owner's property to inflict the bites, which also presents a property-rights issue.
Jones said the clearest indicator that the police were doing their job under the city's current ordinance was the fact that city residents report few dogs walking the streets and presenting a health hazard.
"The way current city ordinances are structured, that's the surest indication that the police department is doing its job," Jones said. "There's not much more we can do."
Weill joined council members Barrett-Simon and Lumumba in pushing for a ban on pit-bull breeds. They also joined in support of requesting a new city ordinance that might allow police to more effectively tip-toe around property- and privacy-rights issues to engage complaints of incessant barking or animals exhibiting threatening behavior.
"We want to give police the tools to better protect the safety of Jackson residents," Weill said. Anderson could offer no immediate ideas on an ordinance that would give police greater power in dealing with animal complaints, but explained that other cities had successfully passed breed bans of their own.
Lumumba, while supportive of the push, expressed doubt regarding enforceability of the breed ban, and asked attorneys to look into how effectively other cities were enforcing their own bans.
Barrett-Simon said she considered the pit-bull breed to be one of the more violent and unpredictable dogs, the result perhaps of unscrupulous "back-yard breeding" by careless owners.
If attorneys return to the Rules Committee with a ban, at least three other members of the seven-member council may not support it: Councilmen Charles Tillman, Tony Yarber and Council President Frank Bluntson indicated no early support for a ban.
"I'm not for banning any dog," Bluntson said. "I'm for tightening up on rules and laws for owners to be more responsible for that dog. Remember when the bad guys were Dobermans? We got over that."
Yarber said police are incapable of stopping all-night barking, much less engaging in a mass collection of freshly banned pit bulls.
"What'll you do when you pick them up--euthanize them? We got five people on animal control. I can't see enforcing that," he said.
Yarber then questioned enforcement: "If we ban any breed, we'll have to define how much pit bull a mixed breed contains before it falls under the scope of the ban, and there's a lot of room for argument there."
Weill said he wanted city attorneys to consider a grandfather clause that might allow pit-bull owners to keep pets they have owned for more than six years and who managed to avoid any complaints of violence.
Sallyann Comstock, director of Texas-based American Temperament Test Society, which has tested dog breed behavioral characteristics since the 1970s, said pit bulls rate better in docility tests than many other breeds. Comstock added that breed-specific legislation was a violation of the civil-liberties spirit of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. She asked that council members inform themselves before casting a vote.
"The general public wouldn't be able to tell a pit bull from a boxer, much less have good knowledge on the behavior of the breed," Comstock said. "Until the general population has more knowledge about dog breeds it would be best to keep silent."
After the meeting, Jones would not offer an opinion on the effectiveness of a potential pit-bull ban, saying his job would only be to enforce the ban should the council approve one. He did say, however, that the brunt of dog bites reported in the city (a total of nine since December, including bites to other dogs) came from Chow Chows and Chow-mix breeds. Unlucky owners reported most of those attacks after being bitten, Jones added.
Comments
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.