Boston Animal Control Produces Two Documents in Response to PBLN FOIA
Says It Would Cost $23,855 to Produce Bite Data
Is This Any Way to Run Animal Control?
As we previously reported, PBLN sent a FOIA request to Boston Animal Control (BAC) which can be read in it's entirety here. The Director of Boston Animal Control, Mark Giannangelo, in his response to the FOIA request, required $308.00 to identify the materials responsive to the request, and objected to producing the name of the victims of dog bites due to privacy concerns.
Bite Data Had Been Requested One Year Earlier,
That Request Remains Unanswered
The interesting thing about the response of BAC, was that a similar request had been made a year before, as can be seen here, and at that time BAC demanded $476.80 to identify what amounted to the same data. As of the date of this article, the previous request by Donna Bishop has still not been fulfilled. You have to wonder how this bite data, which has allegedly already been sent to Ron Consalvo (as attested to in his radio interviews) needs any identification, and costs over $700.00 to identify.
No commentsPit Bulletin Legal News Sends Freedom Of Information Act Request to Boston Animal Control
Oral Request Goes Unanswered
PBLN has been trying to obtain the records that Boston Animal Control provided to the Boston city council and Massachusetts state legislators to justify their proposal for pit bull regulation. Met with silence, PBLN sent out a Freedom Of Information Act request, which can be viewed in its entirety here.
It will be interesting to see the response, and if you want some tips on how to draft your own FOIA, read the article on Pit Bulletin Legal News Network, here.
Colleen Lynn Quietly Admits Breed Bans Don't Serve Public Safety But Wants Them Anyway
Dogsbite.org Quietly Admits Reality of Breed Bans
Colleen Lynn, in an interview you can read in full here, quietly admits what we have known all along: that breed bans don't serve to decrease all dogbites. The relevant part of the article states:
Lynn agrees with arguments that breed-specific laws do not reduce the number of dog bites. But she stresses the need for pit bull bans anyway. "It's not meant to lower all dogbites in a city," Lynn said.
She goes on to say that she wants them anyway. This is the first time I have seen this admission from Lynn. She and her supporters have previously taken the position that breed discriminatory legislation does work to increase public safety, and not just decrease pit bull bites. In an interview with Debra Bresch and again a few weeks ago in a Huffington Post roundtable discussion, Lynn has cited the San Francisco experience to make her point. And she has continued to make the argument despite the fact that there is no real conclusive evidence that breed bans reduce all dog bites. In fact, the data reveals just the opposite. Brent Toellner, who runs KC Dog Blog, has looked at the numbers from almost every place from which he could obtain data. In nearly every case where breed discriminatory legislation has been enacted overall dog bites have not decreased. This includes the UK, Denmark, Omaha, Sioux City, Ohio, and Aurora. We all know about Spain and the Prince George County Task Force. There are other failures too numerous to mention here, but suffice it to say that there is overwhelming authority to support the premise that breed bans do nothing for overall safety with respect to all dog bites.
Lynn's admission then, serves to underscore the fact that she is not out for overall public safety with her breed ban agenda, which is a major part of the dogsbite.org mission statement. In fact, if you listened to her Huffingtonpost interview, you wouldn't even know breed bans were the main thrust of her work. In that interview she stressed mandatory spay neuter of pit bulls as her goal.
It seems that the core breed ban position of dogsbite.org and Lynn's public statements are at odds. But like any politician, it appears Lynn calibrates her message depending on the audience. It may be that this change in position is intended to give her credibility when she preaches outside of the choir. We shall see.
