2012/07/25 Council Agenda Packet

because there was no of tracking a dog that had been declared dangerous from locality to locality.37 Canine Profiling in Operation: No Record of Success Unfortunately, there is a dearth of studies on the topic of the effectiveness of canine-profiling laws. There are only two published studies on the topic and none in the United States. However, to date, there are no studies showing that breed- discriminatory laws protect the public. The United Kingdom banned "pit bulls" in 1991. The Klaassen study examined the U.K.'s Dangerous Dog Act and concluded that the ban had no effect on stopping dog attacks.38 The study examined incidents seen at one urban accident and emergency department before the implementation of the act and again two years later. A more recent study compared dog bites reported to the public-health department of Aragon, Spain, for the five-year period before the implementation of the city's Dangerous Dog Act in 1999 and the five-year period after.39 The allegedly dangerous breeds accounted for 2.4 percent of the dog bites before the breed-discriminatory law was introduced and 3.5 percent of the dog bites after the law was implemented. The authors state that the "results suggest that BSL was fundamentally flawed ... [and] not effective in protecting people from dog bites in a significant manner.i40 These published studies from across the pond are reflected by a recent newspaper article discussing the effect of the Denver, Colorado, pit-bull ban.41 Twenty years after the ban was enacted, the director of Denver Animal Control admits that he is unable to say with any certainty whether it has made Denver any safer. Labrador retrievers—the most popular dog breed — are the most likely dog to bite in Denver. 37 Email from Michelle Welch to Ledy VanKavage,February 19,2010 (On file with author). 38 B.Klaassen,J.R.Buckley&A.Esmail,Does the Dangerous Dog Act Protect Against Animal Attacks:A Prospective Study of Mammalian Bites in the Accident and Emergency Department,27(2)Injury 89-91(1996). 39 B.Rosado et al.,Spanish:Dangerous Animals Act:Effect of the Epidemiology of Dog Bites,2(5)Journal of Veterinary Behavior 166-74 (2007). 40 Rosado,supra,at 172. 4i Peter Marcus,Do Dog Breed Bans Work?Denver Daily News,March 3,2009, http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?alD=3473.