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Beware of the dog protectors
Note to our readers— After this article appeared, on July 13, the Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that "aggregation of… two very different sets of laws into one petition" disqualified the Dog Protection question from appearing on the November ballot.
It looks as though there will be a question on the State ballot this November called “an Act to Protect Dogs.” It sounds pretty good, until you read the fine print.
It might be a good idea to ban dog racing, as the dog racing industry is cruel to dogs, and it is a good idea to ban dog fighting, but the ballot initiative has a third provision which is very different.
The initiative would make it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to harm a police or military dog during the commission of a felony.
The effect of this section would be that police in Massachusetts would attack us with dogs and then charge us with attacking their dogs. This provision would be detrimental to civil rights in Massachusetts and would be another step into the police state mentality.
Of course, if a police dog is unleashed on you, you will be charged with a felony.
The writers of this initiative dropped the ball. They could have really protected dogs by banning the use of dogs by the police and military. Dogs should not be used to commit violence against people.
Look at Abu Ghraib. Look at the civil rights marches in this country.
This initiative is disingenuous as it would not really protect dogs but would instead give more power to the police. The provision about police and military dogs does not even provide any regulation about how the police and military should treat their dogs.
Do police and military treat their dogs better than the dog racing industry? What happens to police and military dogs after they are too old to work?
The use of police dogs in this state is prevalent enough that the negative of the provision regarding police dogs outweighs the positive of the other provisions. If it appears on the ballot in this form, we should vote no on this question.
dog protection
There has been a lot of talk about racing dogs and fighting dogs over the years. Bills have been actually introduced to outlaw dog racing, and dog fights are already illegal in this State.
The odd thing is that there has been absolutely no talk about the need to protect police dogs, no bills filed and no evidence presented as to why there is any need to double the penalty for messing with them to five years in prison. So why did the proponents add this feature? Was it to pander to the law-and-order vote?
What's even sicker is that the first part puts police and military dogs in the same category as service dogs. That's right, dogs who are trained to help blind people are treated the same as dogs who are trained to rip your flesh off.
I agree it should be a crime to abuse dogs, but why are police dogs treated differently from other dogs? Maybe for the same reason police are treated differently from us ordinary slobs. Because they represent the power of the State, and they want us to shut up and obey.
Dig— what goes on "inside" concerns everyone....