117. LA City Council Passes New Dog-Barking Law
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Noise. It gets into your head and under
skin. Too much noise can turn ordinary people
raging maniacs. All too-common noises in neighborhoods are
blaring TVs, blaring car radios, and barking dogs.
cities have ordinances against excessive noise. Of course,
you complain about your neighbor’s noise, your neighbor
hate you and start making more noise. So,
people try to ignore their inconsiderate neighbors. Finally,
they can take it no longer, they simply
.
The city council of Los Angeles recently came
the rescue of its residents—or seemed to. It
a new ordinance: the owner of a dog
barks for 30 minutes straight will get a
the first time a complaint is made. For
second complaint, the owner will pay a $100
or go to jail for a week maximum,
both. The council wrote no penalty concerning a
or fourth complaint. “Finally,” said Zev Doheny, “we’ve
a noise law with some teeth in it.”
course, there are a few problems with the
law: How does a resident prove that a
was barking for 30 minutes? Does he present
audio tape? With modern technology, couldn’t that tape
be “doctored” so that one minute of actual
magically becomes 30 minutes? Couldn’t a person tape
any old dog barking and then claim that
’s his neighbor’s dog doing all that barking? Do
have voiceprints, like humans have fingerprints? Will all
have to get “voice-printed?”
“There isn’t one brain
the lot of them,” complained the owner of
pet store when he heard about the council’s
law. “Their ‘solutions’ are almost always worse than
problems themselves.”
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