FOR CASTLE ROCK, BAN ON PIT BULLS IS NOW HISTORY
One of the longest bans on the breed along the Front Range is history
After more than a year of study and reams of public feedback, elected leaders have done away with one of the Front Range’s longstanding ban on pit bulls and enacted a measure that puts the focus on animal behavior over breed.
The Tuesday night vote to dash Castle Rock’s breed-specific ban, which was part of an effort by the town council to revamp the overall animal code to now allow chickens and bees, was 5-0.
The Douglas County town becomes the first in Colorado to rescind a pit bull ban — 26 years after it put the restriction into place. Denver, Aurora, Lone Tree, Louisville and several other cities in the state still have pit bull bans on their books. Many of the bans came into being after a number of highly publicized attacks by the dogs 30 or more years ago.
But bans based solely on what a dog looks like have been criticized as shortsighted and unfair to pit bulls and their owners, prompting a group of residents in Castle Rock to take up the cause of getting the ban reversed.
Jen Dudley, who helped lead the effort, told the town council Tuesday that she had collected more than 850 signatures on her website from Castle Rock residents urging the town to replace a pit bull ban with a dangerous dogs ordinance.
Deputy town attorney Heidi Hugdahl said that in gathering public feedback, the town received responses from 229 Castle Rock residents supporting a lifting of the ban while 89 residents asked that it be kept in place.
But some at Tuesday’s meeting decried the town council’s reluctance to put the issue to a vote of the people, as was done in Aurora nearly four years ago. Voters in Colorado’s third-largest city resoundingly decided against ending its pit bull ban.
“Let the people of this town decide — not you,” Castle Rock resident George Hager told the council forcefully.
He brought up the 2005 case of Greg Jones, a 10-year-old Aurora boy whose arm had to be amputated after he was attacked by several pit bulls in his backyard. The mauling occurred nine days after the Aurora City Council banned new pit bulls in the city and imposed strict regulations on existing ones, but the attack happened before the restrictions had gone into effect.
Town staff reported that of the 60 pit bulls that were expelled from Castle Rock over the past decade, none were banished for biting or aggressive behavior but rather just because they were pit bulls.