Distressing. Graphic. Gruesome.
These are the words warning viewers about a video of a pint-sized chihuahua being attacked by a pit bull on the Upper West Side of Manhattan last weekend—a shocking event that has prompted a city councilmember to promise she’ll write a new law to protect New Yorkers from vicious dogs.
To this I say: FINALLY.
Don’t read this as if I’m glad this attack happened. It’s awful that this dog, Penny, had to get brutalized in order to get someone to care about the lack of accountability in this state for owners of vicious dogs—an issue that’s needed addressing for many years.
And it’s a bigger shame, but maybe no surprise, that it needed to happen on a crowded Manhattan block, when Staten Islanders have long needed help after their dogs have been attacked and even killed. Not to mention the humans that have borne the scars.
For years, Staten Island has had the highest rate of dog bites in NYC, according to data tracked by the city. That’s still the case, with the data from 2022-2023 showing that Staten Island saw 124 dog bites per 100,000 residents, compared to 82 for the rest of the city.
Making that cold data more real are the visuals. If images like these horrify you, they should:
These are just some of the photos published from the more than a dozen serious dog attack incidents that the Advance/SILive.com reported about over the past decade, just a fraction of all the borough incidents.
Many of our reports were also accompanied by video, but it feels too brutal to reshare it. And like the Manhattan incident, in many cases the dogs were serially vicious.
Even so, there is very little recourse, even if a dog attacks over and over again. Our reporting uncovered that outdated New York laws make it difficult to pursue accountability for owners, either criminally or civilly. And sadly, if a dog is killed by another dog, the most the owner can expect in court is to be compensated for the monetary value of their pet.
On top of that, our reporting in 2019 revealed a troubling lack of resources for investigating dog bites, with just a small team responsible for the thousands of annual cases across the city.
Finally, now, we can have a glimmer of hope.
We hope that former Manhattan borough president and current City Councilmember Gale Brewer’s promise will lead to real action.
We hope our own lawmakers—both those who represent Staten Islanders in the city and Albany—will use this as an opportunity to advocate for borough residents who have suffered trauma over dog attacks that are eerily similar to the one in Manhattan.
And we hope that these changes will mean that, eventually, we never have to see a distressing, graphic and gruesome video like this again.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
