A Dog's Tale of Two Cities

The Rotary Club's report about the Memphis Animal Shelter was released yesterday. The report focuses primarily on the operations of the shelter as well as touches upon some employees' links to dog fighting. I highly suggest you read the report here, since the Commercial Appeal's story does not go into what are other important aspects. Interesting parts are the design flaws of the new shelter (Is anyone really surprised we can't do anything right) and how overwhelming inventory control of the animals is.

What has been missing from the conversation is an examination of the overall stray and problem dog situation in the city. The Memphis Police Department keeps records of dog disturbance calls. The following maps are from January to August 2011. In that time period there were 365 calls. 180 of the calls concerned unknown breeds. 185 of the calls knew the breed, of which 75% were pitbulls. Remember this data isn't from the Memphis Animal Shelter, it comes from MPD. Animal control is therefore an expenditure for more than one city government agency. Additionally, I overlaid the racial breakdown of the city. I want people to understand why black people and white people have very different views on the animal shelter. White people see it more from an animal cruelty perspective and black people as a blight/public safety issue.



This next map shows animal cruelty and dog fighting calls. MPD only took 5 calls for dog fighting and 109 calls for animal cruelty. A few years ago, the city and county took on industrial scale dog fighting and broke most of the big rings. Everyone knows dog fighting still goes on but the scale has changed. What people don't think about is the link between our legitimate economy and the criminal economy. Just like Memphis is a distribution center for products, we are a distribution center for animals in the national dog fighting economy. Memphis produces a lot of dogs for fighting and much of the excess capacity of subpar fighters gets shipped to the Animal Shelter. It would also be likely that one of the reason pitbulls get adopted most at the shelter is because they are being put back into the dog fighting economy, whether in the city or sent some place else.




Regular reads of this blog know I am not a fan of pitbulls. I believe they are safety hazard just because of innate abilities and disposition, that make them very different from other breeds. Yes, I am sure there are some wonderful pitbulls, but many times I see the interview with the dog owners saying how they can't believe their dog just mauled their other pet, neighbor, child, etc. The dog was so sweet. Think of how many news stories just in Memphis are about people getting mauled and killed by pitbulls. Now look at this map. There were 183 human injuries from dogs that required the police to respond. Want to bet that probably 75% of those were pitbulls and, as seen in the map, the overwhelming majority of those attacks happened in black and minority neighborhoods.


The issue of the Animal Shelter is a reflection of how our two Memphis' view local government. On one side government isn't reflecting our moral values. On the other side, is way beyond moral failings, it can't even provide basic safety from dogs! For Christ sakes, not complicated issues like crime, disease, poverty, blight, pollution, and health. Fucking dogs! You can see now why this is a dog's tale of two cities.