The Impacts of the City and County of Denver’s Breed Specific Legislation

In August of 1989, the City and County of Denver, CO, USA enacted legislation that prohibits the presence of all “pit bull” type dogs (PBTD) (defined in Denver as: American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, or Staffordshire Bull Terrier) within the city limits. In the 30 years the “pit bull ban” has been in place, the City and County of Denver and its animal control agency, Denver Animal Protection, have committed substantial resources to removing PBTDs from the community, including patrolling communities and/or responding to complaints made by neighbors, conducting thorough breed evaluations of suspected PBTDs, and kenneling PBTDs found in the city limits. This Social-Environmental-Economic Impact Assessment (SEEIA) examines how the City and County of Denver’s Breed-Specific Legislation (BSL) policy has impacted the economic and social systems of the Denver community. An economic assessment of BSL identified that the City and County of Denver has spent at least $5.8 million on enforcing the legislation, with additional economic analyses estimating that BSL resulted in approximately$107 million in lost direct and indirect economic activity related to lost pet care revenue. BSL in the City and County Denver has resulted in an extended length of stay for PBTDs in the care of animal shelters and also places additional strain on transfer partnerships with shelters in surrounding communities. An estimated $1 million has been spent by shelters in surrounding communities to care for the PBTDs that are transferred as a result of BSL. An assessment of the social impacts of BSL determined that the removal of a single breed of dog is inconsistent with the documented benefits of increasing opportunities for pet-keeping in community. Furthermore, the disproportionate enforcement of BSL in underserved communities and communities of color perpetuates historic trends of discrimination and marginalization in the U.S. and negatively impacts social cohesion of these communities. Despite some of the more negative impacts of the legislation, there appear to be a number of social factors that have sustained Denver’s “pit bull” ban. While in the minority of opinions, 19.4% of Denver residents who participated in an online survey about BSL (n = 252) said that the City and County of Denver’s breed ban positively impacted their perception of Denver and 24.6% of Denver residents said that the breed ban makes them feel safer. This perceived increase in sense of safety, even if only reported for a minority percentage of Denver residents, may continue to serve as the primary reason for policymakers to continue the ban in the present day (Maher, 2009, September 24). The breed ban’s prioritization of human public safety at the expense of the welfare of a specific type of dog, particularly without a substantial impact on the former, represents a diversion from the components that contribute to a Humane Community. In conclusion, we recommend alternatives to BSL that will address the root causes of the issue of dangerous dogs, including: building the City and County of Denver\u27s capacity to support residents in caring for their pets by identifying and expanding pet-support infrastructure such as affordable and accessible veterinary and behavior services, implementing robust non-breed-specific dangerous dog laws, and implementing evidence-based interventions for challenges to social cohesion and interpersonal and interspecies violence

The Impacts of the City and County of Denver’s Breed Specific Legislation

In August of 1989, the City and County of Denver, CO, USA enacted legislation that prohibits the presence of all “pit bull” type dogs (PBTD) (defined in Denver as: American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, or Staffordshire Bull Terrier) within the city limits. In the 30 years the “pit bull ban” has been in place, the City and County of Denver and its animal control agency, Denver Animal Protection, have committed substantial resources to removing PBTDs from the community, including patrolling communities and/or responding to complaints made by neighbors, conducting thorough breed evaluations of suspected PBTDs, and kenneling PBTDs found in the city limits. This Social-Environmental-Economic Impact Assessment (SEEIA) examines how the City and County of Denver’s Breed-Specific Legislation (BSL) policy has impacted the economic and social systems of the Denver community. An economic assessment of BSL identified that the City and County of Denver has spent at least $5.8 million on enforcing the legislation, with additional economic analyses estimating that BSL resulted in approximately$107 million in lost direct and indirect economic activity related to lost pet care revenue. BSL in the City and County Denver has resulted in an extended length of stay for PBTDs in the care of animal shelters and also places additional strain on transfer partnerships with shelters in surrounding communities. An estimated $1 million has been spent by shelters in surrounding communities to care for the PBTDs that are transferred as a result of BSL. An assessment of the social impacts of BSL determined that the removal of a single breed of dog is inconsistent with the documented benefits of increasing opportunities for pet-keeping in community. Furthermore, the disproportionate enforcement of BSL in underserved communities and communities of color perpetuates historic trends of discrimination and marginalization in the U.S. and negatively impacts social cohesion of these communities. Despite some of the more negative impacts of the legislation, there appear to be a number of social factors that have sustained Denver’s “pit bull” ban. While in the minority of opinions, 19.4% of Denver residents who participated in an online survey about BSL (n = 252) said that the City and County of Denver’s breed ban positively impacted their perception of Denver and 24.6% of Denver residents said that the breed ban makes them feel safer. This perceived increase in sense of safety, even if only reported for a minority percentage of Denver residents, may continue to serve as the primary reason for policymakers to continue the ban in the present day (Maher, 2009, September 24). The breed ban’s prioritization of human public safety at the expense of the welfare of a specific type of dog, particularly without a substantial impact on the former, represents a diversion from the components that contribute to a Humane Community. In conclusion, we recommend alternatives to BSL that will address the root causes of the issue of dangerous dogs, including: building the City and County of Denver\u27s capacity to support residents in caring for their pets by identifying and expanding pet-support infrastructure such as affordable and accessible veterinary and behavior services, implementing robust non-breed-specific dangerous dog laws, and implementing evidence-based interventions for challenges to social cohesion and interpersonal and interspecies violence

An anomalous wave formation at the Al/Cu interface during magnetic pulse welding

This paper reports an anomalous wave formation at an Al/Cu bimetallic interface produced by magnetic pulse welding. The mechanism of the anomalous wave formation is investigated using both metallurgical characterization and the interface kinematics. It reveals that the anomalous wave is formed with the combination of the intermediate zone and the interdiffusion zone with a thickness of 70 nm, wherein the intermediate zone is caused by the local melting due to the high shear instability, and the interdiffusion zone is formed below the melting point of aluminum combined with ultrahigh heating and cooling rates of about 1013 °C s−1. A multiphysics simulation of impact welding has been performed, and it is identified that the jetting kinematics and non-uniform distribution of shear strains during high-speed collision enable the formation of the anomalous wave. The numerical and experimental results comprehensively lead to understanding of the mechanism and the characteristics of the anomalous wave produced during an impact welding. This work is supported by the Co-operation Program of UTs and INSAs (France) and funded by the China Scholarship Council (No.201701810138). T. Sapanathan acknowledges F.R.S–FNRS (Belgium) during his postdoc at UCLouvain. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request

Oscillating epidemics in a dynamic network model: stochastic and mean-field analysis

An adaptive network model using SIS epidemic propagation with link-type-dependent link activation and deletion is considered. Bifurcation analysis of the pairwise ODE approximation and the network-based stochastic simulation is carried out, showing that three typical behaviours may occur; namely, oscillations can be observed besides disease-free or endemic steady states. The oscillatory behaviour in the stochastic simulations is studied using Fourier analysis, as well as through analysing the exact master equations of the stochastic model. By going beyond simply comparing simulation results to mean-field models, our approach yields deeper insights into the observed phenomena and help better understand and map out the limitations of mean-field models

Structural preferential attachment: Network organization beyond the link

We introduce a mechanism which models the emergence of the universal properties of complex networks, such as scale independence, modularity and self-similarity, and unifies them under a scale-free organization beyond the link. This brings a new perspective on network organization where communities, instead of links, are the fundamental building blocks of complex systems. We show how our simple model can reproduce social and information networks by predicting their community structure and more importantly, how their nodes or communities are interconnected, often in a self-similar manner.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

On negative higher-order Kerr effect and filamentation

As a contribution to the ongoing controversy about the role of higher-order Kerr effect (HOKE) in laser filamentation, we first provide thorough details about the protocol that has been employed to infer the HOKE indices from the experiment. Next, we discuss potential sources of artifact in the experimental measurements of these terms and show that neither the value of the observed birefringence, nor its inversion, nor the intensity at which it is observed, appear to be flawed. Furthermore, we argue that, independently on our values, the principle of including HOKE is straightforward. Due to the different temporal and spectral dynamics, the respective efficiency of defocusing by the plasma and by the HOKE is expected to depend substantially on both incident wavelength and pulse duration. The discussion should therefore focus on defining the conditions where each filamentation regime dominates.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures. Submitted to Laser physics as proceedings of the Laser Physics 2010 conferenc