Merseyside dog amnesty

[bunn]

I have just looked at  this PDF leaflet issued by Merseyside police about their  illegal dog amnesty.   It makes me angry.

 In particular, the description of 'how to identify an illegal dog' combined with 'who will decide a dog is illegal' and the advice to report dogs belonging to one's friends family and neighbours makes me want to march up and down ranting loudly.   I would like some non-dog-owner people to tell me if they think I am overreacting.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

There's something darkly surreal about the spotter's guide to an illegal dog - 45 cm high with a wedge shaped head, etc. If they did this with people, it would be racist. "How to recognise an illegal immigrant: dark swarthy complexion, mean slitty eyes, foreign jabberings. Please contact us if you see one. It's for their own good, because if you don't, we might have to shoot them."

I have very little faith in the intelligence of the general public. These are the people who, fuelled by tabloid over-reaction and ignorance, go round attacking paediatricians, thinking they're paedophiles. I can imagine them panicking, roughly measuring their neighbour's poodle, and denouncing it as illegal. It has shades of seventeenth century witch hunts.

The ferocious picture on the front doesn't really encourage a sober, measured response, either.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I really liked Liverpool when I worked there, but its undeniably a place where there is a large group of people with relatively poor educations who are likely to panic easily.

I imagine that does attract the dog-fighting types, but I don't see that this sort of thing will help enough with that problem to make up for the enormous potential for misery to the ordinary people who happen to have dogs that are the wrong shape - let alone the dogs.