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Thursday, November 25, 2004

Edgewood Mayor Wants Pit Bulls Banned

By Kathy Louise Schuit
Mountain View Telegraph
    An April pit bull attack on a neighbor's dog in Edgewood has prompted the town's mayor to ask councilors to ban the breed.
    "It could just as easily have been a child," said Mayor Robert Stearley at the Nov. 17 Edgewood Town Council meeting.
    Town staff has been researching the possibility of an ordinance and has gathered information and models of pit bull and vicious animal bans from other communities, Stearley said.
    One of the best ordinance models in the country comes from Tijeras, he said.
    In 1989, Tijeras became one of the first municipalities in the United States to successfully enact a ban on pit bulls. The ordinance was enacted in 1984 following a mauling incident within the village.
    The village then faced a District Court challenge that resulted in a 1988 state Court of Appeals decision favoring the ordinance.
    Stearley said he would like to see Edgewood enact a similar ordinance, but admitted the idea doesn't have the support of the town's animal control officer, Vicki Lenderman.
    In a Monday interview, Lenderman confirmed that she does not support "breed specific" bans.
    "I'm kind of not in line with the mayor on that," she said. "If you ban a specific breed, (people) will just go to another guard dog-type breed."
    The town's current animal control ordinance contains good language for protecting residents against vicious and dangerous dogs, Lenderman said.
    The current ordinance defines a dangerous dog as one that displays threatening behavior when unprovoked. A dangerous dog might snarl and lunge at strangers to the point of causing them to hurt themselves by being startled or retreating, Lenderman said.
    Dangerous dogs are not allowed in the town, she said.
    The dangerous dog situations can often be alleviated by supplying the dog with more appropriate living quarters, said Lenderman. A dog that repeatedly lunges at people who pass by its fence, for example, could be better housed in a backyard kennel.
    A different ordinance section describes vicious dogs. Vicious dogs are those that attack, bite or injure people or other, "peaceful" animals.
    Vicious dogs can come in any form, from pit bulls and rottweilers to chihuahuas, Linderman said.
    "It's not the breed, it's the owners— that's my take on it," she said.
    Still, the sheer numbers of pit bull attacks in New Mexico have Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort about to unveil the specifics of a statewide ban on pit bull breeding, which she plans to introduce in the coming legislative session.
    Wilson Beffort said if her ban passes, Edgewood would not need to add language against pit bulls to its ordinance.
    With a pit bull breeding ban, the pit bull population gradually decreases. It's not the same as the Tijeras ordinance, which is a ban on owning pit bulls, she said.
    "There has never been a statewide ban— even on (pit bull) breeding— in the United States," Wilson Beffort said.
    The governor has also said he intends to introduce a proposal to the Legislature to define dangerous dogs and the consequences for owning one.
    Wilson Beffort said it's likely her proposal and the governor's could end up melded during the legislative process.