Campaign for reform of LA County animal shelters
Speak out for shelter animals
Media enquiries to: llewispr@aol.com
Inhumane treatment, wrongful killing, neglect and unsanitary conditions prevalent at LA County Shelters MUST STOP. MISTREATMENT NO MORE - WE WANT REFORM! An INDEPENDENT investigation of shelter operations is essential.
Simply print the form, add your personal details at the top, and mail to the address shown on the form. We are in this together, please take action to speak out for shelter animals! If we don't, who will??
· August 5 2015 – Laura Jones captured and shared via social media shocking images of dogs wallowing in their own excrement at the Downey Animal Care Center.
· August 18 – Laura Jones presented a petition with 5,000 signatures on it to the LA County Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Don Knabe orders investigation into complaints.
· August 24 – Laura Jones launches the All About The Animals LA County Shelter Survey
· September 1 – Deadline for All About The Animals LA County Shelter Survey results in 111 complaints from 82 respondents. Shocking allegations made against the DACC include inhumane treatment of animals, unsanitary conditions, poor medical care and the dogs being euthanized despite rescue groups or owners committing to claim them
· September 2 – Report by DACC on standards of care in its animal care centers is completed, claiming DACC is "an industry leader in managing animal health"
· September 3 – Laura Jones meets with Supervisor Knabe’s office to discuss shocking survey results and subsequently holds Press Conference to share appalling findings with the media and DACC Director Marcia Mayeda responds in a Los Angeles Times article that “the department is following up on each case identified in the advocates report.”
· October 4 (and 27) - On the same day as animal advocates held a protest outside Downey shelter, the DACC published to their website an initial response to the All About the Animals survey results, and a subsequent response followed. Laura Jones was quoted in the press: “Marcia Mayeda’s response is typical of her defensive and deflective response to criticism which entails making excuses rather than taking responsibility and accountability and striving to make improvements within the shelter network. It also fails to address, for example, the documented photographic evidence of a blind dog drinking out of a bowl filled with urine, and an owned dog (that was wrongfully killed despite his owners trying to reclaim him) whose bowl contains feces instead of water.”
On August 5 2015, Laura Jones, co-founder of All About the Animals, witnessed 22 of the 42 kennels in building 5 of Downey shelter filled with feces, which in some cases were encrusted to the floor seemingly having been unattended to for days. Laura Jones photographed and video’d these conditions, and created a petition to garner public support for an investigation into the conditions at LA County shelters.
The story was picked up by the Long Beach Press Telegram, which then got the attention of Supervisor Knabe, District 4 Supervisor. Supervisor Knabe proposed a motion to investigate the complaints made within 15 days (to be carried out by the County CEO in conjunction with Director of the Department of Animal Care and Control, Marcia Mayeda).
Laura Jones presented the petition signatures (around 5,000, of which 1,400+ are LA residents), and feedback from the community of LA County, to the Board of Supervisors at their meeting on August 18. The motion was passed by a vote of 4-0.
The media was now really starting to take an interest, and the story was covered in the LA Times, on KNBC LA, and also a live interview of Marcia Mayeda and Laura Jones was aired on KFI AM 640 (Mayeda makes numerous excuses for the conditions but fails to take any personal accountability despite her $200,000+ annual salary funded by taxpayers!), as well as KIIS-FM.
So what next? Well, the conditions shown at Downey shelter are just the tip of the iceberg. For years now complaints from the animal rescue community about the conditions and management of LA County shelters have been stifled by the Department of Animal Care of Control (DACC). There has been retaliatory action against whistleblowers (for example, in 2007 Mayeda put rescuer Cathy Nguyen on the “Do Not Adopt” list, along with animal abusers, simply because she spoke out and filed a case against DACC for alleged illegal killings; the case was settled and Cathy’s DNA classification was overturned). Josh Liddy, who applied to volunteer at Carson shelter, was banned from doing so in 2014 because of speaking out about LA County shelter conditions on his blog (the response to his volunteer application, which was received 7 months after submission, called him “disruptive”). In the words of a rescuer who wishes to remain anonymous, "we are nervous to speak out because the LA County Department of Animal Care and Control will make up any excuse to take our pull rights away, this has happened in the past and were petrified of it happening again".
The animal rescue community will be silenced no more.
We invite rescue groups, volunteers and networkers to take our survey (deadline September 1) to document specific examples of complaints against LA County DACC over the last 3 years. We also invite balanced, positive feedback. The survey will facilitate anonymity. The information and data will be analyzed, summarized, and presented to Supervisor Knabe’s office at a meeting agreed for September 3.
It is time for change, the homeless animals of LA County deserve better. Thank you for speaking out for the shelter animals.