Who let the pit bulls out?

Costs of Denver’s Ban on our Misunderstood Friend 

After over thirty years of being prohibited from owning pit bulls, voters in Denver, Colorado prevailed in their efforts to repeal a ban found to be very costly by a study conducted by IAMECON President Dr. Devrim Ikizler in collaboration with other researchers.¹ This study, which is recently published in the peer-reviewed Animal Law Journal², provided council members and voters with valuable insights into its high costs and lack of success. The overturning of the ban was particularly impressive, considering it had previously been upheld twice in the Colorado Supreme Court.³

Since its conception, Denver’s Breed-Specific Law (BSL) has been muddied with controversy, especially considering that findings of both national and local studies dispute claims that pit bull-type Dogs (PBTD) account for most dog bites. To be specific, in many national studies, other dogs such as German Retrievers and Doberman were found to be significantly more likely to bite than other breeds.⁴ Meanwhile, for Denver, the research team found that pit bulls only accounted for about 3% of reported dog bites. As such, their research focused on identifying just how expensive a seemingly misguided law was costing the Denver Community.

To calculate the economic costs to the City, researchers first had to estimate the number of PBTDs in Denver over time, an endeavor never before reported.  Estimates of PBTDs were conservatively calculated by first combining multiple public sources of rates of dog ownership and average number of dogs per dog-owning household in Colorado, adjusting for Denver, missing years, and observed average PBTD intakes. Next, two separate approaches were used to estimate the BSL-related forgone revenues for the City and County of Denver. For the first approach, estimated numbers of PBTDs were multiplied with the average per dog spending that could have remained within Denver in the absence of BSL (grooming, boarding, pet sitting, and medical care). For the second approach, total size of the veterinary and pet care-related industries was used as the starting point, which was then apportioned by the percentage of PBTDs in Denver. 

	Approach	Annual Estimate	Cost to Denver (1989 – 2017)
Lost Revenues	Approach 1: Lost Local Expenditures Medical, Boarding, and Pet Sitting, for all PBTDs	$4.9 million	$142 million
	Approach 2: Lost Veterinary and Pet Care Services in Denver – Apportioned by % of PBTD	$2.6 million	$86 million
Direct Costs	Enforcement Costs – Denver Animal Protection Agency	$0.2 million	$5.8 million

Another important component of the study is the enforcement costs of the PBTD ban. Unfortunately, the Denver Animal Protection (DAP) agency only had relevant data dating back to 2007, but thanks to a local journalist’s past open records request, the research team was able to extrapolate the dataset. Researchers were thus able to estimate enforcement costs using estimated PBTD Impounds and related costs, as detailed below:

In an effort to justify the repeal of the pit bull ban,  a group advocating for Denver’s repeal of the pit bull ban promptly distributed briefing books which heavily cited the aforementioned findings to all council-members.⁵ Although the group was able to secure a 7-4 vote to repeal in February, the Mayor vetoed the proposition and instead punted the decision to voters in November, 2020. The group, known as Replace Denver BSL, soon made the Briefing Book available to the public⁶, thus sharing Dr. Ikizler and his colleagues’ economic assessment to Denver voters, who just a couple weeks ago voted overwhelmingly to finally repeal the expensive pit bull ban.⁷

Excited to see our research make a difference! 

1. Sloane Hawes and Kevin Morris from the Institute of Human Animal Connection at the University of Denver (https://socialwork.du.edu/humananimalconnection) and Katy Loughney who contributed as an independent researcher.
2. Hawes et al. “Denver Breed-Specific Legislation”, Animal Law, 2020, Vol. 26, pg. 195-270.
3. Hawes et al. “The Impacts of the City and County of Denver’s Breed Specific Legislation” Speciesism and Breed Discrimination Collection, 2019, 5.
4. Johannes Schalamon et al., “Analysis of Dog Bites in Children Who Are Younger than 17 Years”, 2006, 117 Pediatrics e374, e376.
5. Roberts, Michael “Pit Bull Advocates on Why Denver Should Finally End Ban After 30 Years” Westword.com, Feb. 2020.
6. Spencer, Shawna “It’s Time to End the Pit Bull Ban in Denver”, Medium.com, Oct. 2020.
7. Helsel, Phil “Denver Overturns Pit Bull Ban After More than 30 Years” Nbcnews.com, Nov. 2020.