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Seats are STILL available to meet with CM Todd Turner on
Wednesday, September 16th, 4pm
at
County Administration Building,
14741 Gov. Oden Bowie Drive
Upper Marlboro, MD
You:
Live, work, play, or do business in
Bowie, Glenn Dale, Greenbelt, Westchester Park, parts of Lanham-Seabrook and Upper Marlboro
...Prince George's County Council District 4.
You:
Believe the "pit bull ban" is wasteful, ineffective, unnecessary, and doesn't make the public safe.
You: Want the nightmare of benign family pets seized from their families to end
.
It's time: To meet your elected representative -- Todd Turner -- to talk about repealing the "pit bull ban" today.
The federation will be there too.
- Other people have the right to peacefully own the dog of their choosing. So should we.
- County spends between $300,000 and $500,000 annually to take dogs that have hurt no one while cutting essential public safety services.
- Breed-neutral dangerous dog laws keep communities safe. The breed ban sucks resources away from enforcing effective laws.
And this...
Prince George's County has a discriminatory law that prohibits the keeping of American Staffordshire Terriers, Staffordshire Bull Terriers and American Pit Bull Terriers and dogs mixed with any of those breeds. It also includes very disturbing vague language that says any dog displaying the physical characteristics of any of these breeds is banned, but it does not state what those characteristics are. Visual breed identification is known to be, at best, a guess. The ordinance is ineffective, costly, subjectively enforced, detrimental to current residents, potential residents, local businesses and regional municipalities. Eliminating the law would actually improve public safety.
A Washington, DC metropolitan region suburb with almost 900,000 people, Prince George's County, Maryland's 18-year long dog ban is the second largest in the U.S. The county has dangerous dog laws, nuisance animal laws, leash laws, cruelty and negligence laws that apply to ALL dogs regardless of breed. These are the laws that protect the public, not BSL. The ban does not improve public safety; in fact, the enforcement of the ban takes animal control officers away from the very duties that keep our communities safe.
READ: Baltimore Sun, September 4 -
READ: Prince George's Sentinel, August 13 -
READ: Prince George's Sentinel, August 20 -
Prince George's pit bull ban forces some residents to relocate
READ: Prince George's Sentinel, August 27 -
The ban costs between $300,000 and $500,000 a year to enforce. While the county has raised taxes, furloughed employees, cut school funding and other essential services, it continues to fund this unnecessary law. Almost 700 dogs have been impounded in the last year as a result of the ban, over 15,000 since the law began...the vast majority of whom, according to animal control, are perfectly normal family pets that would not otherwise be taken into custody. The lucky ones will lose their homes, families, and everything familiar to them; the unlucky ones will lose their lives.
All this while breed labeling is no more than a guess.
Many families who want to move here cannot. Many move out when their dog is threatened. Many who do move here realize too late that their dog is illegal, forcing them to hide their furred family member and live with the concern that their dog might be seized from them. Still others have their dog ripped from their homes and their hearts. The same dogs impounded by the county are the 4th most popular dog in Maryland...yet no other county in the region feels a ban is necessary. Nor is it necessary here.
They are good enough to be pets outside
the county, they are good enough to be our pets here. Our dogs are being taken from us
-- right out of our living rooms and away from children who love them.
(if you've already signed up, we'll see you there!)
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