Cutting testicles off pit bulls among Lancaster mayor's unique efforts

Never mind being mayor. If he could just be appointed king for a year, jokes Mayor R. Rex Parris, he could really turn this wind-swept, sagebrush-dotted corner of the sun-baked Mojave Desert into an oasis of comfort and modernity.

Crime? Forget about it. There would be a military-style surveillance plane flying overhead. There would be a steady revenue stream from flashing billboards and musical roads placed all over town.

Problem is, say the mayor's critics, he already acts like he's king, bullying others until he gets his way, sometimes proposing silly ideas that trample on people's civil rights and sometimes getting the city sued, as he did earlier this year when he championed a successful ballot initiative directing the City Council to open its meetings with a prayer.

"People either love him or hate him, and a lot of people hate him," said Arnold Rodio, a local plumbing contractor who, like Parris, grew up in the area when it was little more than a rural outback on a desert highway to nowhere.

Parris was the guy, after all, who kept hundreds of members of the notorious Mongols motorcycle gang out of town last year by using a back-tax issue to padlock a run-down hotel the gang had booked for its annual summer blowout.

The mayor, 58, promoted an anti-crime campaign, fueled in part by threatening to throw poor people out of subsidized housing if their children didn't behave. Crime dropped more than 30 percent in two years. And he pushed through a law giving the city the right to cut the testicles off pit bulls after he decided the dogs were being used by street gangs to intimidate people.

"No gang-banger wants a pit bull that doesn't have dangling parts," Parris says, laughing heartily.

Hehehehe...of course, I was thinking the cutting the balls off pit bulls must be a unique effort indeed.

It reminds me of the Robin Williams (or might have ben Eddie Murphy, can’t remember) sketch where he is talking about “Wild Kingdom” and how Marlin Perkins used to send the Jim Fowler out to do the dirty work, while he sat off to the side:

MARLIN PERKINS: “Today, my assistant Jim and I are going to circumcise a Water Buffalo...”

(cut to Jim facing the buffalo in high grass)

JIM FOWLER: “Oh, sh*t...Oh sh*t...”

WATER BUFFALO: “I see you out there, just you and me. And all you got between us is that Medicaid sh*t...”

“The breed should be outlawed. I believe they have a serious mental disorder...and it’s genetic...”<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

If only that would solve the problem. Unfortunately, the dogs are not inherently dangerous, and therefore, any attempts to ban/regulate/spay/neuter thus far have failed miserably. Denver is a glowing example of this, and has had several maulings since their ban, as well as zero decline in attacks. The UK has had a huge increase in dog attacks since their legislation passed, and now they are ready to join several other countries in repealing the bans after finding them costly, ineffective, and even counterproductive.

They now have more pit bulls in the UK than they did before the ban, and the majority of them are illegally-owned by thugs, only making things worse. The dogs that were causing problems before (this is in all areas where BSL has passed) were the same ones owned by these people. Regulating them does nothing because the irresponsible, ignorant, violent, or just plain oblivious owners are still out there, and many of them don’t care that a law was passed. They keep their dogs in basements, on rooftops, deep in the woods, or kenneled inside their homes, all so they can keep the thug accessory.

The people who have pit bulls and know enough about dogs to do the right thing with them are not the ones whose dogs make headlines. There are an estimated 10 million pit bull-type dogs in this country, yet there are an average of 25 to 35 deaths a year from all dogs combined. Last year, 19 people died from dogs that weren’t pit bulls, yet those stories were only found with much research. I can easily pull up a daily tally of the two or three pit bull attacks (some of which involve no injuries, curiously) every day. Nevermind the fact that those couple of daily pit bull attacks published are a drop in the bucket compared to the 13 thousand dog attacks (two thousand of which require hospitalization— where the heck are these stories?) happening daily.

There are so many experts that have studied these issues over the years, and literally none have come up with the conclusion that a single breed of dog is more dangerous than another. They have, however, found that irresponsible ownership is a factor that follows ALL attacks by every breed, and is the single most common factor that ties them all together. That is something worth looking into. Calgary did, and because they bothered to do the correct research and listen to only reputable sources, they found their dog attacks decreasing drastically, by simply implementing responsible ownership laws that make all dog owners accountable for their pets safety, health, and secure confinement. They didn’t need to ban a breed, yet they have seen more success than all of the places that have BSL combined.

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