You must remember the old catch phrase from Hawaii Five-O, "Book him, Danno". Well, maybe for this particular article it should be "Swab him, Danno".
Council officials in Melbourne, Australia are tired of dealing with the constant stream of dog attacks that take place daily, so they have created a 'dog attack kit' that comes complete "with swabs, gloves, sterile containers, a tamper-proof evidence bag and, most importantly, the paperwork that records the chain of evidence custody". The availability of such a kit will enable police officers and animal control officers to take swabs when called to the scene of a crime (aka dog attack). Now this doesn't sound like a bad idea, and maybe having this type of kit available will ensure that all those dogs labeled as 'dangerous' and usually the first to be condemned of attacking other dogs or people would be proven innocent.
Now I imagine that the processing of such a kit comes with a high price and I have to wonder who will be paying for this processing? I know that if my dog was ever falsely accused of attacking a person or dog, I would do anything that needs to be done to ensure that shes was not wrongly convicted. But what about those dog owners who have dogs that are often targeted based on the breed, but may not have the finances to provide such evidence. Or, is the Australian government going to eat the costs? I doubt it. So is this just another means to target the poor classes of Australia? Or, is this really an unbiased means of finding the real culprit behind dog attacks. I really don't know the answers to these questions, however, if you do I would love to hear from you.
On a more positive note, I do believe that this kit could prove the innocence of so many dogs that would normally have been confiscated without any question of innocence. Actually, I have a friend who told me about a situation he found himself in when in moved into a new neighborhood and one of his neighbor took an immediate disliking to his rottweiler - even though the dog never did anything to warrant such negative attention. An incident took place where the neighbor and her dog were attacked by a dog and woman called Animal Control and reported that the Rottweiler had attacked them. This poor guy had been inside the whole time with his dog, but felt that he couldn't fight the accusations and his dog was taken away and euthanised. In hindsight, I could say that if the same thing happened to me I would fight this with everything I had to prove my dogs innocence AND to prove a point, but maybe this person didn't have the drive that I have, or the finances, or even just the time required to fight something like this that could drag on and on and on.
There was another comment in the article that concerned me. Cr Cribbes said that "when dogs were involved in aggressive acts in which no harm was done (the majority of cases), a DNA sample could be taken and stored as a precaution". A few years ago I would have thought this was a good idea, but after spending the past 7 yrs in America I have seen that the criminal justice system is often anything but just.
My final question is targeted against all those arrogant, uneducated City officials and politicians who fought to invoke the dreaded BSL (Breed Specific Legislation) against such wonderful dogs like my own American Pit bull terrier, Zoe. Now with the current BSL that continues to sweep the great southland (Australia) and has forced many pet owners to re-home or euthanise their beloved pets, out of the mass hysteria that politicians have fed the public about bully breeds. Why would there even be a need for dog attack kits when all the supposed 'dangerous breeds' have been banned? Something tells me that the authorities need to do something about the current dog attacks because BSL has been initiated and yet there are still dog attacks. Hmmm, something tells me that the Breed Specific Legislation that was promoted, and initiated as a means to save every person and animal from savage attacks by dogs that were stigmatized as being vicious has failed. Politicians have gotten it wrong yet again, imagine that.
Read the full article here at The Sydney Morning Herald.
I’m so glad someone like you have the time, efforts and dedication writing, for this kind of article… Helpful, Useful, and Charitable.. Very nice post!
Posted by: Term papers | November 04, 2009 at 10:16 PM