“Cornered By Its Lies, Karen Bass's City Hall Doubles-Down on Danger, Deception and Damages” by Daniel Guss
When lies blow-up at one city agency, what happens when its interloping, journalistic migraine asks questions at others? #BASSACRE #Kakistocracy
True story.
An FBI agent sarcastically said to me, “they must really love you at City Hall.”
I replied, “well, if you find my body in a dumpster, you know where to start.”
He said, “that’s why we record the calls.”
I love dark humor, especially at the top of a column that had to be reconfigured several times as new wrinkles emerged with City Hall’s insecure, corrupt fingerprints all over them.
Within its first 24 hours, the preview published here last week generated more traffic than all-but-one column in the 2.5 years since DanielGuss.Substack.com launched. (ICYMI — Hat-tip to those of you who provided verifiable observations that helped this publication land five more Los Angeles Press Club nominations for columns about City Hall corruption and incompetence. The honors are shared with you.)
Borrowing LA Mayor Karen Bass’s phony, trite catchphrase, if anyone is “locking arms” in City Hall these days, it is law firms lining up for multi-million-dollar settlements for their clients: victims of violent, preventable and predictable dog maulings tied to a wildly mismanaged, irrefutably dishonest LA Animal Services.
Emphasis on preventable and predictable.
City officials, including those who are elected, hired or appointed, have ignored thousands of red flags; ignored innovative and cost-effective ideas to improve them; ignored retaliation; and ignored questionable public meeting and public records practices beyond their limited authority. The evidence is abundant, anecdotal and ubiquitous.
Attsa whole lotta ignoring, right there.
City officials also made a lot of untruthful statements to the media.
They created, but repeatedly denied to local TV news reporters, a dangerous environment that includes FAS-related aggression, or Fear, Anxiety and Stress, in some dogs.
City officials have stated that they are “required” only to provide food, water and a clean environment — which they regularly failed to do — implying that proper veterinary care, socializing and daily exercise are optional. While claiming that they rely on volunteers, they ignored volunteer complaints about retaliation for documenting horrendous conditions and speaking up about them.
Plaintiff attorneys will have a field day with this:
In fact, Staycee Dains, the only person Bass interviewed before hiring her as Animal Services General Manager in 2023, repeatedly claimed that leaked plans detailing the Bass administration’s plan to kill hundreds of healthy, adoptable animals were “conspiracy theories.”
But public records from the day before show Dains egging on an employee as he developed those plans, proving that she was acutely aware of them. This had the potential to mislead employees, volunteers and visitors into believing that conditions at LAAS were safer than they really were.
Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall in a Staycee Dains deposition?
The truth is, Bass and Dains are looking for any excuse to kill virtually every animal in its custody regardless of whether it is sweet and adoptable. And as I will soon prove, it blatantly refuses to take in animals that it is legally and/or contractually obligated to do.
Had they instead acted with integrity and transparency, they might have mitigated risk, reduced suffering, saved lives and — shocker — saved money. They wouldn’t have needed to plunder $1 million in donations to the Animal Welfare Trust Fund. And that they did.
We will get to all of that in due time, to pivot to a parallel story, with good reason.
When the preview post started generating considerable traffic, some of these same city officials and other city agencies reactively dragged their feet on breaking public safety info at Animal Services requested by this column.
Instead of transparency, City Hall made it even more onerous to get to the truth.
You may have seen recent news about Leslie Corea, a veteran kennel supervisor working in the city’s Harbor pound, almost losing her life in a dog mauling. She remains hospitalized after seven surgeries, is severely disfigured and has a rough road ahead.
And you may have read that City Council approved a $7.5 million settlement last week in another mauling tied to the city’s Van Nuys pound.
But city officials dodged my inquiries about another serious dog bite incident.
Didn’t hear about that one?
It happened last weekend at the South LA pound in Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s district. He soon ascends as City Council president but went silent when I asked him about danger and cruelty at Animal Services, and the red flags people had sent to him.
Here’s my recent email to officials who continue withholding information about it.
It includes Jackie Hamilton, a long-time Bass aide who is widely blamed for Bass hiring Dains without interviewing anyone else; Zach Seidl, the mayor’s communications guy; Eunisses Hernandez, the Councilmember who chairs the committee responsible for Animal Services; and Agnes Sibal, Public Information Director at the agency. And Bass and Dains, of course.
With no response four days later, as transparently foreshadowed, the email gets published.
Simultaneously, the Los Angeles Fire Department played an evasive game withholding important information, including what was the nature of the 911 call from the South LA pound. The PIO cited HIPAA and city regulations, but was unable to provide specificity.
What had already been reported to me was that the victim is an adult female who may have sustained one or more severe Level 5 bites to the face, which may have been witnessed by her children and other family members. Their visit to the SLA pound was reportedly after an earlier visit to spend more time with the dog who allegedly attacked her, that they had considered adopting. (Injuries in the Corea mauling were also reportedly Level 5 on a scale where Level 6 is death.)
I submitted a public records request to confirm reports that the dog who allegedly attacked the woman in South LA did not have known behavioral issues.
I told the LAFD’s unidentified PIO that the purpose of their 911 response, and whether the victim was an adult or minor, did not violate HIPAA or city laws.
Only when I said I’d run this by my public records guru did the LAFD confirm that it responded to a 911 call about a dog bite and that the victim had been transported to the hospital.
At the same time, the LAPD played another dangerous game.
On Monday afternoon, I asked the Los Angeles Police Department to provide whatever information it had regarding a real-time guns-drawn response to a 911 call where the city’s West Valley pound is located.
While I provided the specific address to its Media Relations department, it didn’t know that I also had photos of the reported evacuate if you can / shelter in-place if you cannot incident.
The response from the LAPD’s Public Information Officer on duty was, “I do not show a call at that location.”
But here’s what it looked like at that exact location, at that time:
After a series of challenging emails that took two days, LAPD Media Relations later only confirmed that there was a 911 call on the “9600 block of Cozy Croft Avenue,” which is the side street, and that its notes say, “Suspect trying to steal employees moped. Suspect male Hispanic, wearing blue hat, white shirt armed with large hatchet. Suspect was taken into custody.”
The LAPD refused to confirm the exact address that the 911 caller provided, and how many officers and vehicles responded. They refused to explain why, if the incident was not at the West Valley pound, its officers were seen entering it and had their guns drawn.
The LAPD knew that there was a serious real-time incident going on right there, whether on Plummer or Cozy Croft.
It is bad enough if the LAPD withheld critical public safety information because the inquiry came from this column. But it is even worse if what the LAPD claimed, that it had no idea of what was going down, is true.
The corruption and incompetence is eventually going to get people killed.
But it has yet to get anyone fired.
Emphasis on yet.
Let’s wrap, for now, by repeating a sentence from earlier in this column: The truth is, Bass and Dains are looking for any excuse to kill virtually every animal in its custody regardless of whether it is sweet and adoptable, and regardless of their denials that they are doing it as you read this column.
There is a whole lot more to come.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)