"Whistleblower: Bass's Chief Vet, LA Times Ignored Animal Cruelty in Pound Medical Clinic" by Daniel Guss
Karen Bass Inherited a Mess, But Opts for "Failing Up" GM Over Pleas For Accountability
@TheGussReport — A student at one of the most prestigious veterinary schools in the world alleges that Dr. Jeremy Prupas, chief veterinarian at Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS), was shockingly indifferent about filthy and inhumane conditions in the city pound’s closed-to-the-public medical units where seriously injured and ill animals lingered in their own waste, unable to move away from it on their own, and were regularly deprived of basics like water and food, but did not demand accountability. The whistleblower further alleges that the conditions were also due to lazy employees who had plenty of supplies, but were more interested in goofing off and playing on their cell phones.
The whistleblower, who already holds a master’s degree in public health and an impressive managerial-level résumé in the healthcare industry, also says that the LA Times ignored concerns outlined in an October 21, 2022, email detailing what they witnessed.
Prupas, who hauled in $259,195.06 in salary ($186,713.71) and benefits ($72,481.35) last year, and Dakota Smith, the Times reporter to whom the email was sent, did not respond to invitations to field questions about the allegations. Neither Smith nor Times spokesperson Hillary Manning denied that Smith received the whistleblower’s email. Despite being given the exact date and time it was transmitted, Manning only said, “we generally do not comment on ongoing or unpublished reporting.”
Ongoing?
Given that the allegations are now almost a year old and implicate the Times in enabling them by ignoring them, pound volunteers and LA’s humane community shouldn’t hold their breath.
Weigh the whistleblower’s credibility for yourselves:
What Else The LA Times Isn’t Reporting
On Sunday, dozens of animal advocates picketed the mayor’s eerie, publicly owned mansion in Windsor Square to decry disgusting conditions throughout LAAS (not just in the medical units), intact animals caged, chained and exposed to the elements in homeless camps throughout LA; the lack of widespread free spay/neuter services and no enforcement of spay/neuter laws; and enabling endless backyard breeding and more.
A subscriber search of the Times’ paywalled website and app shows no story about the protest.
While Bass’s predecessors, Antonio Villaraigosa and Eric Garcetti were picketed there for the same, if less severe, conditions, Sunday’s protest was held just 273 days into Bass’s term because she, other city officials and Staycee Dains, the mayor’s new GM of LAAS, ignored a barrage of polite, similarly worded emails in recent weeks pleading for a 30-, 60- and 90-day plan of action now that she has been on the job for several months and they uniformly consider LAAS to be in a state of emergency.
VIDEO: On 9/10/23, protestors chant “Do your job, Karen Bass, do your job!” in front of the mayor’s Windsor Square home:
The protestors’ concerns are well-founded and expertly logged by Citizens for a Humane LA (CHULA), a group co-founded by actor Michael Bell and Paul Darrigo, perhaps the leading local voice on humane concerns in Los Angeles. The night before the protest, Darrigo explained the Bass/Dains chaos in a segment on 870-KRLA.
Bass Put in Virtually Zero Effort to Find the Best Candidate for LAAS GM
According to her response to my public records request, Bass interviewed only one candidate - Dains - for the job, despite her well-documented troubles running the deadly, overcrowded but much smaller Long Beach animal pound.
Bass, in hiring Dains without interviewing even one other soul, is now a mayor who embraces “failing up.” Her failures in her prior job running the Long Beach pound were well-documented by Spectrum News 1 and the Long Beach Press-Telegram with troubling headlines that Bass and Dains refuse to address.
Also stonewalling these concerns is rookie LA City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez who, as chair of the committee overseeing LAAS, is now responsible for its death, suffering and mismanagement, along with City Council president Paul Krekorian, infamous for his disregard for animals, because he alone assigned Hernandez as its chair without consulting those who understand the agency’s problems from a non-City Hall perspective.
The silence is equally deafening from City Controller Kenneth Mejia who, as an LAAS volunteer himself, would have unlimited and unprecedented access to every corner of it, including for his staff and the media, if only he would take them — and the retaliated-against volunteers — on regular and unannounced walking investigations of each pound.
INSANITY: We got here by doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.
Former LA City Councilmember Dennis Zine once gave a loud and justified public tongue lashing at a council meeting to then-LAAS GM Ed Boks, correctly asserting that he was incompetent and a magnet for trouble, and pointing out that the agency had long-been the worst-run department in City government.
When Eric Garcetti subsequently succeeded Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor, he kept Boks’ replacement, Brenda Barnette (CORRECTION: the original version of this story incorrectly said Garcetti had hired her) and, despite ever-worsening conditions at LAAS, he simply tuned out the rescuers and pound volunteers (just like he tuned out most people in LA) who protested at the mayor’s manse.
Dains is yet another plug-and-play GM who may be in over her head already.
Mostly a carbon copy of her predecessors, Dains was hired by Bass because of the lingering influence of Barnette and Best Friends, which has long had an unhealthy relationship with LAAS (e.g. Best Friends employed Barnette’s daughter) as this column has documented as far back 2017.
But the problems neither begin nor end with Dains, like never-ending misuse of unpublished email addresses to covertly (i.e. illegally) conduct city business that is not only quietly allowed, but often rewarded.
Take City Hall slug Jim Bickhart, who assumed a fake identity more than a decade ago, “Snake Pliskin,” and wound up being suspended for literally encouraging violence online in Venice, but never apologized as was required in order to keep his job…but kept it anyway.
Despite Bickhart regularly falling asleep in LAAS meetings, even for a half-hour at a time, City Hall always had a job for this Snake.
When Bickhart wore out his welcome with Villaraigosa, then-Councilmember Paul Koretz knew about Bickhart’s sleeping and misconduct, but hired him anyway. (Koretz is the guy who squandered more than $1 million in funds donated specifically for the care and comfort of LAAS animals on a pointless and shady website rebuild, when those funds should have been saved and spent on the animals suffering in the medical units and elsewhere.)
As recently as 2020, Bickhart openly — and ironically — admitted in his lacity.org email account to using covert email accounts to communicate with, among others, Brenda Barnette.
Bringing the whole corrupt, infected mess back to Karen Bass, as I showed a few weeks ago, Larry Gross, who is her LAAS Commission president, uses multiple covert email addresses to conduct city business but remains in his appointment despite his failed tenure.
It’s because of his role as a California Democratic Party Region Director.
And by making political-rather-than-merit-based appointments, memes with dog-shit saturated diarrhea kennels at LAAS smear Gross, Bass and all in their sphere.
Who is going to adopt sick, shit-covered animals from your corrupt pounds, Karen Bass?
This is now all on you, while you dodge my questions.
It is all.
On.
You, Karen Bass.
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(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.)