Sioux City and the Pit Bull Double Standard

by Martin Matheny · 2010-03-29 13:00:00 UTC
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Like a lot of communities, Sioux City, Iowa has a dog registration law. Unlike a lot of cities, they enforce it differently depending on the breed of dog involved. Come Thursday, police and animal control officers will be knocking on the door of every known pit bull (and pit bull mix) owner in the city who hasn't registered their dog. If you haven't registered your pit, then your dog can be seized and euthanized.

Sioux City, by the way, really doesn't care for pit bulls. Last year, the City Council passed a ban on bringing new pit bulls and mixes into the city. This year, they're getting more draconian about the ones who were already living there. The city's heavy-handedness makes little to no sense - singling out a specific breed or breeds for public safety reasons has been proven to be among the junkiest of junk science (pdf).

Besides relying on some pretty well-debunked statistical nonsense, the upstanding folks on the Sioux City Council are also enforcing a hypocritical double standard.

Put it this way. If you own a Golden Retriever, a pug, a dachshund, a boxer, or pretty much any other dog, you pay a fine if you forget to register your pooch in Sioux City. If you own a pit bull or a pit bull mix (and given the vagaries of visual evidence in breed identification, exactly how do they figure that out?), then your dog can be taken and put to death. Game over.

What this boils down to is the natural reactionary nature of politicians who have to get re-elected every few years and need something easy to show for it. So, let's pick on defenseless animals who have already undergone more than their fair share of demonization in the media and the court of public opinion.

It's a clear double standard - either Sioux City needs to stake out the non-hypocritical ground and say that any dog not registered after the deadline will be seized and euthanized (and let's see how well that goes over with the voters), or they need to apply the same standard to every dog, regardless of its breed.

Photo credit: cstreet.us

Martin Matheny is a political consultant and animal welfare writer based in Athens, Georgia.
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