Pit bulls are outlaws in Denver

DENVER — A few weeks ago, two police cars and two animal-control vehicles pulled up at the home of Stef'ny Steffen looking for her beloved 4-year-old pit bull, Xena. Seven officers hauled the animal off to the city shelter, putting her on death row.

Xena became an outlaw after Denver won a court fight and reinstated one of the toughest pit-bull bans in the nation. Since May, more than 380 dogs have been impounded and at least 260 destroyed.

Dog owners are in a panic. Some are using an underground railroad of sorts, sending their pets to live elsewhere or hiding them from authorities.

Some owners, like Steffen, have won a reprieve for their pets with help from a rescue group. The group got Xena released by signing an affidavit stating that the animal would never return to Denver. The group took the dog to Mariah's Promise in Divide, an animal sanctuary that has accepted more than three dozen pit bulls from Denver.

For Steffen and her partner, Gina Black, leaving Xena 60 miles from home was a lousy option but the only one they had. "It's safer than animal control. Safer than keeping her underground — at least she'll be able to play now," Steffen said. "But she'll miss us. We're her pack."

Denver is one of three major metropolitan areas, along with Miami and Cincinnati, to ban pit bulls, according to Glen Bui, vice president of the American Canine Foundation.

Pit bull typically describes three kinds of dogs: the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. But Denver's ban applies to any dog that looks like a pit bull. The animal's actual behavior does not matter.

City Councilman Charlie Brown said, "Pit bulls are trained to attack. They're bred to do that."

Critics of the ban use words such as "annihilation" and "genocide," and the city shelter has received e-mails likening animal-control officers to Nazis.

Denver banned pit bulls in 1989 after dogs mauled a minister and killed a boy in separate attacks. The Legislature passed a law in 2004 that prohibited breed-specific bans, but the city sued and a judge ruled in April that the law was an unconstitutional violation of local control.

Critics of the ordinance say that a breed ban is misguided and that the law should instead target irresponsible owners and all dangerous dogs.

"If anyone says one dog is more likely to kill ... that's not based on scientific data," said Dr. Julie Gilchrist, a doctor at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who researches dog bites.

The CDC, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Humane Society of the United States examined 20 years of dog-bite data and concluded that pit bulls and Rottweilers caused the most deaths. But the researchers also noted that fatal attacks represent a small proportion of dog-bite injuries and that the number of bites per breed simply seems to rise with their popularity.

Sonya Dias, who is moving out of Denver because of the ban, said of her pit bull, Gryffindor: "He's been dangerous to a couple of pairs of shoes and some mini-blinds. But otherwise, he's a jewel."