No One Wants to Face the Pit Bull Menace

Novi — The tragic death of a five-day-old baby at the Oakland Glens mobile home park last week became national news after the horrifying revelation that a dog was responsible. Every major outlet caught the breaking story, and it even knocked the Temple Israel attack out of the news cycle for a couple of days.

It was hard to escape the monstrous details and subsequent interviews with the child’s angry grandmother. But readers might have noticed a hole in the mainstream reporting: the complete avoidance of identifying the dog’s breed. No one named the breed in their reporting, with only one mentioning it was a “mix-breed.”

The knee-jerk reactionary by many I spoke with was collectively: “It’s gotta be a pit bull. What other breed has a track record of mauling children to death?” Household pets don’t kill people, after all.

Three days later, I grew restless and started peppering the Novi Police Department with calls, but they weren’t interested in revealing the breed of the dog either.

So I went to the mobile home parked to find out. Within seconds, I spoke with residents who immediately, without hesitation, identified the dog as a pit bull. A clearly shaken resident living within line of sight to the family’s home was unequivocal: “It was a mix breed pit, and was seen regularly running the streets, and I think there’s two more in there.”

Why were the Novi Police and local media hiding this seemingly important piece of the story, particularly when the statistics reveal a disproportionate number of fatal and severe attacks from this specific breed?

Are pit bulls a protected class that require unspoken silence similar to inconvenient crime stats? Would identifying the breed of dog in conjunction to the tragic death of an infant create a possible stigma to the parents and other pet owners?

From 2010–23 pit bulls accounted for 406 deaths, or 68% of reported dog-related deaths. Children and elderly people account for a majority of those deaths.

If pit bulls are this pernicious to human life, why can’t we be rid of these vile creatures? Pit bulls are rarely seen in higher income suburbs, but they are everywhere in urban and low-income suburban areas and seem to go along with a certain kind of dog owner. Owning one requires a lack of understanding of how feared they are by neighboring residents and the danger they pose.

Within poor areas of suburban Detroit, it’s common to see wild packs of pit bulls running the streets. Several years ago, I was canvassing a neighborhood in Detroit’s infamous Red Zone and spied a pack of pit bulls running in my direction. Their mouths were agape as they barreled toward me, and my adrenaline spiked as I turned for my car. My feet felt frozen in cement, but I somehow made it to safety with a three-legged pit bull only feet from my ass.

These beasts are released by their owners into the urban decay, where they go feral and gang up. One imagines the terrible damage they might inflict on youngsters playing in their backyards as distracted parents turn a blind eye. 

That owners bring this genetically optimized beast into their homes and around their children is eyebrow raising. That we ignore and hide the terror they inflict, just so we don’t upset their owners, is bad for society.

When deaths of children occur at the mouths of these dogs, Pit owners take to social media clinging to an absurd trope: It’s the owner, not the breed.

Perhaps it’s both.