"Karen Bass in PETA's Dog House" by Daniel Guss
Mayor, Dog Pound GM Staycee Dains called out for planned mass kill of 800+ healthy dogs, cats and others and for refusal to take-in strays. LA Times ignored that and more.
When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass hired Staycee Dains to be the general manager of LA Animal Services, my public records request showed that Bass never interviewed any other candidates despite a wealth of warnings about Dains, who was widely considered a DEI, rather than a merit, hire.
As predicted by this column, it has been a disaster.
8/3/23: "Torment and Kill: Karen Bass's Plan for Animal Pound Overcrowding"
9/12/23: "Whistleblower: Bass's Chief Vet, LA Times Ignored Animal Cruelty in Pound Medical Clinic"
And as I reported in January the LA Times kept ignoring ever-worsening conditions at the pound: “LA Times reporter Dakota Smith allegedly called a former LAAS (whistleblowing) veterinarian — for the first time in a year, after she allegedly undid their social media connections — and asked, “are you mad at me?”
Now, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, is calling out Bass with a campaign of posters citing her and Dains’ failure to even take in strays, as is required by law.
Bass, Dains, LA City Council president Paul Krekorian and Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who chairs the City Council committee overseeing LAAS, refused to answer questions about the ever-worsening conditions on the streets, in the pounds and about their planned mass killing of healthy, adoptable animals and failure to provide free mass spay/neuter programs.
“LAAS has washed its hands of the crisis it helped create by refusing to enforce the city’s spay/neuter ordinance and allowing the homeless animals it turns away to flood L.A.’s streets, where they often suffer and die painfully and slowly,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “PETA is calling on Mayor Bass to actually do her job and remind city shelters of theirs: to provide shelter to all.”
The chaos, predictably and tragically, continues despite evidence of empty cages at LAAS.
Petition to Fire Staycee Dains
On CityWatchLA, Phyllis Daugherty reports that “Los Angeles Animal Services Adoption Coordinator, Jake Miller, warning of the pending euthanasia of 800 dogs within the next four weeks due to inhumane overcrowding of shelters and lack of adoptions.”
When ABC-7’s Leo Stallworth reported on it, Dains implausibly denied it.
Part of the problem, many believe, is also the misuse of the word euthanasia, which strictly means putting to death animals whose health is in incurable decline. What Bass, Dains — and Hernandez — have here is an abundance of healthy, adoptable animals suffering solely because of their politicized lack of leadership, ideas and action.
7/19/22: "Paul Koretz's Million-Dollar Swindle: Cruel Consequences, Retaliation and a Paperwork Shell Game"
Daugherty continues, “rather than uniting volunteers and rescuers, Ms. Dains explanation has alienated them to the point where on March 4, 2024, the following petition appeared on Change.org.”
Could LAAS Lose Its Non-Profit Status?
As I reported last year, LAAS Commission president Larry Gross, who Bass has kept in that role largely because he is a Democratic party operative, has used a series of clandestine, unpublished email accounts to conduct official LAAS business, which some say worsened conditions at LAAS. While he eventually acknowledged doing this, Gross refuses to identify every account, thus making public records requests for their content impossible, short of a lawsuit.
5/22/23: "EXCLUSIVE: Bass Commish Using Hidden Email Accounts, Blocking Access to Public Records"
Some, but not all, of those email accounts belong to Gross’s non-profit, Coalition For Economic Survival, a tenant’s rights group.
In fact, some such content has so freaked out Bass’s right-hand man Solomon Rivera and the LA City Attorney’s office that they redacted 100% of at least one email, including the date and time it was sent.
Consistent with this column’s award-winning activism, it is exploring whether this conduct puts in jeopardy the non-profit status of LAAS and/or Gross’s organization.
Dakota Smith Benched at LA Times?
It appears Dakota Smith’s alleged refusal to report transparently on LAAS, and as noted elsewhere by this column, has finally become too much for the struggling media titan.
With other reporters now filing stories on LAAS for the El Segundo-based newspaper, here is a tip it has yet to report…
On Friday, a protest demanding Dains’ firing organized by local animal rescuers will take place at City Hall at 9:45am, prior to the Council meeting where city officials are likely to get an earful about LAAS, which for years, has been called the worst-run department in the city.
Some things never change.
(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.)