Op-Ed: 'Kill all pit bulls!' – Leaked Memphis tape causing new outrage
Memphis city official’s leaked tape reveals shocking evidence of a breedist agenda on official level, invoking strong condemnation from animal rights supporters.
Maryann Parker
Prada, caged at the Metro Animal Control, Nashville, TN
Those lamenting Prada’s abuse in Nashville, get ready for this new shock. And this one is something you would hardly have imagined, let alone expected. The news is that a city official of Memphis, Tennessee, has been recorded telling Memphis Animal Shelter (MAS) to kill all pit bulls and any other dogs that look like a pit bull.
If you think you read it wrong, you are free to reread the above and realize that this did happen for there is recorded evidence of this order and a
news video has made it public on YouTube. The recorded conversation does not have a video to show what official gave these orders, but the voice in the audio and ensuing news reports show that it is a woman who ordered the MAS in November 2011 to kill all pit bulls and dogs resembling them.
As pointed out in this
abc24 report, 270 pit bulls were killed by the MAS in November, and even a doctor on the shelter’s advisory board admitted that the shelter was killing almost all pit bulls taken in by it. Surely, we don’t expect anything near good coming from leaders whose highest achievement is venting anger and sickness on helpless dogs. But can senselessness go o that extreme?
The leaked tape has started to create an outrage among dog lovers and animal rights activists against this kind of breedist mindset. On YouTube and Facebook, people have repeatedly used the name “Hitler” for the woman who gave the orders. If that falls short of what defines this mentality, people in Tennessee and outside need to look for the right word in their dictionaries to make sense of what this woman wanted, and whether she was in senses when giving such a “horrendous” order, as it was called on social media by a canine supporter.
Breedism is not new to American states and thousands of pit bulls have been killed over the past some months in various states. The Memphis official has taken this race in breedism to a new level, one far below the lower limits of humanity. The animal rights activist Bryan Mauldin was right in crying out over this, “God help any family who owns a dog who looks like a pit bull!”
