Gail Alexan­der

The Dan­ger­ous Dogs leg­is­la­tion will be re­vamped, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the need for dogs as pro­tec­tion in the cur­rent crime cli­mate as well as the need for the pub­lic to be pro­tect­ed from "bad" dogs, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has said. Ram­lo­gan con­firmed that Cab­i­net yes­ter­day held dis­cus­sions on re­vamp­ing the leg­is­la­tion fol­low­ing the killing of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer Denise Rack­al by sev­er­al pit bulls owned by a po­lice­man at Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas, on Mon­day. Rack­al had been walk­ing to her job site at 6 am when she was set up­on by the pack of dogs which had es­caped from the of­fi­cer's yard.

De­spite try­ing to de­fend her­self, Rack­al was mauled to death, with her throat and brain ripped open. On­look­ers, in­clud­ing a po­lice­man, claimed they could do noth­ing to save her. Fam­i­ly mem­bers of the po­lice­man, who at­tempt­ed to call off the dogs, failed to con­trol them or get them to halt the at­tack on Rack­al.

A lob­by is now be­ing mount­ed by mem­bers of the Ed­in­burgh neigh­bour­hood to get the of­fi­cer to stop breed­ing pit bulls, fol­low­ing Rack­al's killing and pre­vi­ous at­tacks by the dogs on oth­er peo­ple. There has been an in­creas­ing num­ber of pit­bull at­tacks-killings and maul­ings-in the last year all over T&T. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day ex­pressed hor­ror at Rack­al's death.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said he was putting to­geth­er a team to re­view the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act in con­sul­ta­tion with an­i­mal rights and women's rights groups as well as oth­er stake­hold­ers. He agreed there must be in­put from oth­er sec­tors of the pub­lic in­clud­ing vic­tims and/or their rel­a­tives. Ram­lo­gan said the for­mer Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act was con­sid­ered too oner­ous and would have led to a de­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple keep­ing such dogs. "My aim is to strike the right bal­ance for peo­ple to keep such pets and al­so in the con­text of the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion and to en­sure the sit­u­a­tion is pro­por­tion­ate with the need for pub­lic safe­ty and for peo­ple to be able to walk the streets free from fear," Ram­lo­gan said.

Ram­lo­gan said he had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from a wom­ens' rights group on the is­sue. He not­ed: "Many sin­gle women and ca­reer women keep dogs for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es." Ram­lo­gan said the leg­is­la­tion should be ready by the end of the cur­rent Par­lia­ment ses­sion (in June) or ear­ly in the next ses­sion af­ter Au­gust.