Los Angeles, No Kill confusion and choosing role models wisely

On Tuesday, a group of Los Angeles shelter workers submitted a proposal to the City Council that seeks to remove Ed Boks as the head of animal control in Los Angeles.

The petition was signed by 30 of the 32 animal care supervisors at the Los Angeles shelter, and 105 of the 216 animal control officers for the city.

According to the staffers, in an effort to achieve no-kill status, the shelter has been warehousing dogs in order to decrease their euthanasia rates. As they've warehoused animals, shelter conditions have worsened.

"They're warehousing animals -- four and five and six per cage," said Victor Gordo who represents the union of shelter supervisors. "That's not good for the animals and that's not good for the public. These animals are tearing each other up." 

These conditions may be one of the reasons the shelter has seen over 730 animals die (uneuthanized) over the past 2 years -- a 22% increase vs the 2 years prior.

The group also claimed that Boks has allowed the number of  field enforcement officials to fall to dangerously low levels.  Boks disputed this claim saying "Impoundments are also up, demonstrating field operations are functioning better than usual."  This is a very interesting claim given that Boks has previously blamed the economy and owner-surrendered animals for the reason behind the city increasing its euthanasia rates after a decade of declines...but now he has confessed that impounds by officers have gone up following the passing of their mandatory spay/neuter ordinance last winter.  So far this year, euthanasia rates for dogs are up 31% in the Los Angeles Animal Shelter system.

This sounds like quite a mess. Now I've never met Boks, or anyone involved in the situation in LA for that matter, so I'm not really qualified to speak to who's right and who's wrong here. Obviously, the increased shelter killing, the increased deaths in the shelter, and increase in the number of dogs impounded are all signs that the system is pretty broken right now.  And having 30 of the 32 supervisors in the shelter calling for their boss's job is never a good sign. 

This also also sounds like they are creating some more confusion over the idea of "No Kill". Not only did the Los Angeles Times article note that Boks was warehousing because of his efforts to make Los Angeles into a No-Kill shelter, but the San Jose Mercury News (never one to let facts get in the way of a good headline) "LA's no-kill shetler policy allegedly harm animals."

I will repeat, nowhere in the No Kill philosophy does it call for warehousing animals.  It calls for ADOPTING animals. Los Angeles was NOT, and was in no way, no kill.  Seriously folks, read the book.

Meanwhile, this also should send a loud signal to cities looking at instituting their own canine policies to be sure they know who their role models are. Last week, Houston, TX had discussions about following Los Angeles' lead and implement a mandatory spay/neuter ordinance similar to the one in LA.  The article even cited Boks in the article.  I'm wondering if they really feel like Los Angeles is the model that should be followed here.

Meanwhile, there is a group in Seattle (Families and Dogs against Fighting Breeds)  that is pushing for a ban on "fighting breeds" (I'll note that they think a lot of dogs are fighting breeds).  They even announce on their website that they want to follow the model established in the UK with the UK Dangerous Dogs Act. They seem to ignore the fact that over the past decade, the UK has seen their total number of dog bites and attacks go up by 50%, while Scotland has seen the number of bites and attacks go up by 150% with the ordinance.

I think it has never been more important to find cities with SUCCESSFUL animal controls, laws and shelters and work hard to emulate those case studies.  Just because someone else did it does NOT mean it was successful. Some day I hope we'll get to the point that we focus on these successful cities.

For more about the SEIU 721 and the Animal Control Alliance's complaints about LAAS and Ed Boks you can read their report here.

More from SEIU 721 on the hearings.

For more on the hearings, LA Animal Watch has had a lot of details this week.

Comments

[Rinalia]

Good post. Sounds like the system needs a serious overhaul - it's never a good sign when 90+% of your supervisors and half of your aco's want you removed. Of course, the dogs end up being the ones to suffer.

[skennedy]

You're right Brent. Boks was handed the mess way after the radicals had started smoke bombs in 2003. If LA can't pay the vets enough to do low cost altering and if the targeted area (which is South LA) can't be targeted (in 2006 13,000 dogs came in and 9,000 were picked up by AC;50%+ are usually killed) and if the rescues/community is not behind the shelters, how is Boks supposed to make headway? 2006 shows they had 32 fosters. 32??!! You cannot make headway like that. And you're right, no kill is not stockpiling. And I knew they would say MSN didnt work, and now will say No kill doesn't work. The only thing left for them to say is a moratorium on breeding, unless the MSN lawsuit (court hearing 10/2/08)prelim injunction is granted. It sounds contrived but this was planned out by radicals. They know MSN doesn't work. And they knew by ruining the relationship of rescues/shelter/community, there could be no No Kill, plus, they didn't bother to do the Big Fix appropriately. They started too late.