Less than a month after Shawnee’s governing body voted to repeal the breed-specific legislation that prohibited residents from owning pit bulls in the city, a group of Prairie Village residents are asking their city council to consider doing the same.
Approximately a dozen people showed up at Monday’s council meeting to show support for resident Caitlin O’Toole, a high school student who delivered a short speech during the meeting’s open forum challenging the assertion that pit bulls are responsible for the majority of dog bite fatalities.
A group of residents began contacting city officials in the wake of the Shawnee vote to request that Prairie Village consider repealing its pit bull ban. The city has had a piece of breed-specific legislation on the books since 1988.
Roeland Park repealed its breed-specific ban on pit bulls in January 2015 after months of sometimes contentious debate. Westwood, Mission Hills and Leawood all have ordinances that categorize pit bulls as potentially dangerous animals and require owners to follow certain safety measure to keep them legally in the cities. Overland Park also bans pit bulls unless they were registered with the city prior to July 27, 2006.
The current ordinance on the books in Prairie Village is copied below:
2-105 PIT BULL DOG – KEEPING PROHIBITED.
(a) It shall be unlawful to keep, harbor, own or in any way possess within the corporate limits of the City of Prairie Village, Kansas, any pit bull dog. Pit bull dog for the purposes of this chapter shall include:
(1) The Staffordshire pit bull terrier breed of dog;
(2) The American pit bull terrier breed of dog;
(3) The American Staffordshire bull terrier breed of dog; or
(4) Any dog having the appearance and characteristics of being predominately of the breeds of Staffordshire pit bull terrier, American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire bull terrier; or a combination of any of these breeds.
2-142 VIOLATION – PENALTY.
a) Any person who fails to do anything required by this chapter or who does anything prohibited by this chapter is guilty of a violation thereof. Any person convicted of the violation of any provision of this chapter where a specific penalty is not otherwise prescribed shall be fined not more than five hundred dollars, or imprisoned for more than thirty days, or be both so fined and imprisoned.
b) Each day any violation of this chapter to which this penalty applies continues constitutes a separate offense.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Fairway still had a ban on pit bulls on its books. That ban has been repealed.
