April 14th, 2010 by Editor
The Chicago Tribune seems to have waited until today, which also happens to be the day the Elgin City Council convenes, to publish the article, Elgin’s new animal law won’t cover 2 recent dog bites. The article is about just that: two recent incidents involving dogs in Elgin. Funny, because the Courier News reported on these incidents almost 10 days ago in their Police Blotter. So why now Tribune?
Also of note is that while the Courier News reported that one of the dogs in question in one of the attacks was a “loose dog of unknown breed,” the Tribune reported that the dog was a “pit bull mix.” Even more curious is that Kristie Hilton, who identified herself as an employee of the Elgin Police Department, posted on Facebook saying the dog in question was a Rhodesian Ridgeback/Boxer mix (two breeds commonly and erroneously called “pit bulls”).
But the final cherry on this lying, smearing crap of a sundae is that Councilman John Prigge will almost certainly use this fabrication to start pounding the “pit bull” ban drum yet again. He promised as much after expressing hope that there would be another incident:
We need to have another occurrence to happen…and then there’s no turning back.
We predicted there would be some fabricated “pit bull” attack, the pretense of which would be used to push a breed-specific amendment to Elgin’s existing animal control ordinance. (And the other incident supposedly involved a Rottweiler, so will Prigge add even more breeds to his breed-specific hit list?) The Lord knows how much we wanted to be wrong, but since we’ve seen this modus operandi time and time again, we knew it would happen just this way.
There is no doubt now that Elgin is a target city for breed-specific legislation (BSL). So, does that mean Prigge has been promised something (like say a generous campaign contribution for the next political office for which he intends to campaign) by the cockroach powers that be if he can get BSL passed? This is, after all, Illinois, home of Al Capone, pay-to-play politics, and corrupt government. Would any of us be surprised? It also wouldn’t be the first time the Tribune has engaged in a smear campaign against “pit bulls” to aid in the passage of some onerous legislation like a breed ban.
