As noted in prior posts (here and here) Garden City, Kansas was considering removing the breed-specific language which singled out so-called “pit bulls” in their vicious dog law.   As of February 4, 2014, they have done so.   American Pit Bull Terriers, Staffordshire Bull Terriers, and American Staffordshire Terriers, as well as mixed breeds of these breeds, are no longer considered “vicious” in Garden City.

Going forward, owners of these three breeds or breed mixes will no longer be required to post signs warning of a “vicious” breed, inhumanely kennel, fence, or enclose their dogs, or walk their dogs with muzzles.

Police Chief James Hawkins noted of the ordinance change that,

“I think we can live with the change. Pit bulls, according to a lot of people, are hard to define and identify so maybe we’ve been identifying the wrong dogs . . . “

So, the police chief is basically acknowledging that the dogs they were identifying as so-called “pit bulls” may not have even been the dogs they define as “pit bulls.”  

Do you see what the dog lobby means when we say that “pit bull” can be pretty much anything you want it to be and that that’s why statistics, including Garden City’s, on so-called “pit bulls” are skewed and therefore meaningless?