Seattle Crime Reports : Seattle Crime Blog : Seattle, Washington

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I don't know how someone can continually write a semiweekly column about nothing and still retain a position at one of the Northwest's most respected newspapers. But The Seattle Times' Nicole Brodeur has managed to do just that.

In terms of crime news, Seattle should be celebrating: statistical data recently came out showing that our city was experiencing its lowest crime rates since the late 1960s. But instead, Brodeur's column yesterday - despite saying very little - somehow manages to rain on the parade.

As seems to be an ongoing trend with this author, her latest piece once again appeals to our most superficial emotions without letting reason get a word in edgewise. To Brodeur, it seems that because of a few recent high-profile crimes (crimes that have been elevated to media-sensation status, due in no small part to the same publication for which she writes), all the good news is meaningless:

The numbers would feel like welcome sun, if the year hadn't started with blood on the sidewalks, if holiday hugs hadn't given way to a sudden interest in self-defense classes.

But death pays little attention to the calendars of men. Of course the year is going to start with "blood on the sidewalks" - that has has been the case every year before this one and will continue to be the case every year in the future. In the Northwest's most populous city, we should expect this more than anyone in the region.

As city dwellers, we've always got to keep our guard up. Thinking that we have some sort of right to traverse the city with a care-free mentality and without a constant awareness of our surroundings is extremely naive. If you want a life where your personal safety is all but guaranteed, barricade yourself inside a cabin in the woods. But if you're living in the city, you are expected to develop street smarts (those habits we get into that serve as our natural defenses in the urban jungle). It is the beauty of the social contract: in exchange for a constant state of cautious awareness on our part, urban dwellers get to reap the benefits a city has to offer.

But some people can't seem to look past the bad. Why? Seattlest jumped into the debate yesterday, and commenter James provided an eloquent answer that sums it up best:

[T]he safer things get, the more people freak out about edge cases and the incidents that do happen.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we live in a city. There will be murders, rapes, burglaries and assaults. If you're that concerned about your personal safety, buy a gun (an idea that a perfectly reasonable resident proposed at the Capitol Hill Neighborhood Safety Forum two weeks ago...and which was met with scoffs and sighs from much of the audience). But when preparing to step out that front door each morning, we should always remember that things aren't nearly as bad in Seattle as they could be.

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I have avoided commenting on this for some time now, but as more and more folks continue to jump on the anti pit bull bandwagon, I felt that someone needed to stand up against this absurdity.

First, let me preface my comments by saying that I don't own a dog and have no intention of ever doing so; I find domesticated canines to be dirty and overly needy (not to mention completely unnecessary for urban dwellers). Frankly, I much prefer cats.

But despite this position - or perhaps because of it, and the unbiased perspective on dog ownership that it offers - I still find it ridiculous that so many people are speaking out against pit bulls as pets.

It comes as no surprise that the some of the leading anti pit bull advocates in our local community are members of the editorial staff at The Stranger, Seattle's stereotypical "alternative" weekly newspaper. In a December 27 post on pit bulls gone wild that appeared in their SLOG, Dan Savage comments that it's "[t]oo bad we have to wait until a pit bull attacks before we shoot the damn things." Then, in his Morning News post yesterday, Savage describes the dogs as "crazed killing machines."

The debate moved a bit higher on the journalistic ladder this this morning, when Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur made clear where she stands on the debate.

Brodeur's column explores the idea of a citywide ban on pit bull ownership, similar to the one enacted by Enumclaw in 1990, using a pit bull attack sob story to illuminate her obvious point: that these dogs have no place in our society.

From the piece, "What's a dog-loving city to do?"

One look at Colleen Lynn's arm, and I was chilled — then enraged.

She bears six purple marks where a pit bull's teeth sunk in, and a plate beneath her skin to shore up a fractured bone. Six months after Lynn was attacked while running on Beacon Hill, her arm is just 25 percent healed. And that's nothing special.

Between January 2002 and August 2007, the city of Seattle recorded 1,519 dog bites. Pit bulls were responsible for 361 of them — 24 percent.

[...]

Lynn, 38, a freelance Web designer, has been slowly, tentatively researching a citywide ban on pit bulls, or a requirement that the dogs be sterilized. "I have to prepare myself to be massively intimidated," Lynn said Monday. "But we need to recognize the problem. Our community is suffering."

"Our community is suffering?" No. A small segment of our community - 361 of nearly 600,000 Seattle residents - is suffering. Does a problem facing less than 1% of our population warrant an all-out ban on ownership of a dog that, according to Sunday's P.I., makes up more than 1,500 of our city's 48,329 pet dogs?

The problem is that Colleen Lynn is too emotionally entrenched in the issue. Of course she's going to go after pit bulls...one attacked her! I feel her pain. No one deserves to be mauled, and its understandable that in such a situation, a victim will look for someone/something to blame. But Lynn's push for a ban on pit bull ownership is no different than, say, George W. Bush's push to depose Saddam Hussein because he was "the guy who tried to kill my dad." When we let personal experience and the emotion surrounding it consume us, we lose sight of reason. Anyone who can look past Lynn's bias and is willing to weigh the facts will know that the obvious answer to the question posed above is "no."

The idea of restricting what type of dogs we can own is, quite simply, an assault on freedom. And thankfully, I'm not the only sane person in this debate. From Brodeur's column:

Ledy Van Kavage, senior director of legal training and legislation with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said breed bans are ineffective and a waste of money.

"This is America," she said. "You should be able to own whatever breed you want."

You want to end pit bull attacks, Seattle? Provide more stringent safety regulations for their owners. Weigh heavy fines against folks whose pit bulls get loose. Restrict pit bull ownership on individuals with a history of animal abuse or negligence. But blaming the dogs is absurd; as Brodeur and the P.I. point out, only 361 pit bull attacks happened over a five year period - despite the fact that since 2003, Seattle has had a steadily rising population of these dogs.

What it really comes down to is stereotypes: people oppose pit bull ownership because the occasional brutal attack leads fear-mongering newspaper editors to hype up the threat. As is so often the sad case, these reporters at The Stranger and The Seattle Times are looking for solutions without addressing the real problem. When small children are acting like beasts in public, do we look at them with disgust? No; we blame their parents, who as child-rearing adults have a social duty to control their children.

Dog ownership should be no different. Seattle needs to hold people - not their pets - responsible for community safety.