Recently Animal Care & Control Executive Director Julie Bank was interviewed on a local radio segment.
For people unfamiliar with the ACC, Ms. Bank painted a convincingly upbeat picture of the ACC.
Ms. Bank’s obviously believes that the only effective way to attract public support (volunteers, adopters, and money) is by “feel good” news … even at the expense of truth and accuracy.
In contrast, Shelter Reform believes that ACC animals can attract a groundswell of support if the public were told the truth about what the ACC is, who controls it, and how it treats its shelter animals.
What Is Animal Care & Control?
When asked if the ACC operates by using City funding, Ms. Bank deflected the question by answering that the ACC is a “private organization” that has a contract with the City, but relies “heavily on private funding.”
TRUTH: There’s nothing “private” about the ACC. The City created it. The ACC relies overwhelmingly on the Department of Health for its funding. The DOH has always underfunded the ACC. The DOH controls every aspect of the ACC, including hiring Ms. Bank as its Executive Director.
“Come on Down to the ACC!”
Ms. Bank said that people shouldn’t “always believe the rhetoric that you see on the internet or is out there.”
Instead she invited people to “come down to the shelter,” “to find out how the animals really are cared for and to talk to the individuals involved,” and to “contact us to find out what our statistics really are.”
Great! We urge people to take Ms. Bank up on that offer. First, visit an ACC Shelter but demand the following:
- Insist on seeing the ENTIRE shelter – not just the adoptions areas. Seventy-Five percent (75%) of ACC animals are kept out of sight of the public. See for yourself how the ACC cares for all its animals.
- Seek out volunteers (you won’t find many because the ACC Volunteer Program sends volunteers fleeing to the nearest exit) and ACC employees (again, very few employees because the ACC fired a lot of staff to save money). Ask them how the ACC cares for its animals, helps adopters select pets, nurses sick animals, keeps cages clean, etc. Observe how the Front Desk Personnel interact with people waiting to adopt or surrender animals.
Second, as for Ms. Bank’s claim regarding the ACC’s “real” statistics, here are some key questions you should ask ACC Executives:
- When you use the word “adoptions,” is it correct that most of ACC “adoptions” are animals taken by rescue groups?
- How many dogs and cats were pulled by rescuers in 2010 and 2011? What percentage of those animals fell ill from diseases they caught at the ACC? How many of those animals died while in the care of rescue groups? How many of these “rescued” animals still didn’t have a permanent home 3 months after being pulled? 6 months after being pulled? 12 months after being pulled? How many “rescued” animals ended up back at the ACC? Don’t most rescue groups struggle to pay for medical and kenneling costs for the ACC animals they pull?
- How many dogs and cats were adopted directly from the shelter in 2010 and 2011? How many of them returned as strays or surrenders?
- The ACC says the number of dogs and cats coming into ACC shelters dropped in 2010 and 2011. Isn’t a major cause of that decline in numbers because the ACC stopped rescuing cats from the streets?
- How many ACC animals are euthanized because (as reported on statistics to Maddie’s Fund) they are labeled as “untreatable.”
- When will the ACC publish a list of all the specific medical and behavioral conditions that supposedly make a dog or cat animal “untreatable”?
Please tell us about your visit to an ACC shelter and what you were told by ACC staff, volunteers and executives. (Info@shelterreform.org)
We urge our readers to listen to Ms. Bank’s entire interview because she does convey some useful information. For example, Ms. Bank describes the ratio of cats to dogs, how every Summer the shelters are flooded with kittens and their moms, and how and what to donate to the ACC (it even has a link on Amazon.com).
She also encourages people to match their skills with their passion for animals. She explains that the ACC is going to post 100 new jobs at the ACC and that they’re looking for “some good people.”
ACC certainly needs good people. If you become an ACC volunteer or employee, you can help reform the ACC from the inside.
Or at least you can try.
And here’s a point I’m always trying to hammer home with those who defend them from afar: go there. Spend an hour in their lobby. Get the feel of the place. Makes me want to flee.
As a volunteer at Manhattan ACC, I echo what John says. The lobby is a disgrace and one fundamental thing that Ms. Banks could change is to SEPARATE adoptions from intake. Instead, we have the mass chaos of those waiting to adopt (who should of course, be attended to as quickly as possible and instead sometimes wait for hours on end) and those dumping off animals. Even if one or two potential adopters leave in a day because of the horrendous wait, that’s another animal or two that will be killed.
I find it interesting that Ms Bank encourages people to “come down to the shelter,” “to find out how the animals really are cared for and to talk to the individuals involved”.
Maybe she should start by doing that herself.
I agree that more people should go down to the shelter, look around, take notes and report back on the email site listed in the above story. And there SHOULD be two areas, one for adoptions, one for intakes, so the time waiting will be cut down and more animals could be saved and adopted and people wouldn’t walk out because the lobby is so chaotic with animals going in and out. People: go there and spread the word of what goes on there. GET THIS PLACE REFORMED NOW
The first thing that needs to be done is to get Julie out of her cozy, clean, serene office and make her work out of the shelter. Second thing that needs to be done is to open the entire shelter to the public! Since not all the animals can FIT into the adoptions area, then the entire shelter and all the pets in it MUST be opened to the public so ALL animals within those horrific walls have a CHANCE. No adopter should leave the shelter empty handed! There are so many pets inside those walls. If someone would just take the time to help them, the adoption rate would increase. At the next board meeting JULIE should give the statistics in NUMBERS not percentages. Percentages don’t do the amount of pets killed any justice. Also, there should only be ONE WAY to count the dead animals — if they come in alive and leave dead, they were killed there – either from disease or by the needle — but all those animals count. She should NOT be able to mislead the public with the bogus accounting system currently used to record death. Julie is missing the most fundamental piece necessary to make the ACC a success — understanding that she NEEDS the volunteers! Julie, do you understand that? YOU NEED THE VOLUNTEERS. The volunteers don’t need you!!! If you had half a brain, you’d have the place humming with volunteers. You’d have people escorting potential adopters around the shelter. You’d have a super successful dog walking program in place! YOU’d have the place bursting with free help!!! However, because you are a mean-spirited, control freak who doesn’t have a clue how to show appreciation to anyone, you have cost the pets the companionship they so long for, the walks they deserve and their chances to live! You are as much a problem for these pets as the Board of Directors and the Mayor. YOU all should be FIRED and replaced by the twenty or so people with demonstrated success and passion for saving lives. Julie is too full of herself to resign no matter how HATED she is in this city!!! God help the animals. THE LIES continue!
Julie no doubt has her eyes on what for her is THE prize. The city pension that will come out of all this. Without even having a designated office in any one of the shelters. That’s a pretty neat trick Julie.
I run a rescue in SC and see the Pets on Death Row, etc., listings from NY nightly. I am constantly amazed and concerned that almost all of the cats listed have apparently developed URI in the shelter (and possibly other contagious conditions too). While it is not easy to control such conditions when there are many daily intakes, it can be done and certainly the large number contracting and either succumbing to these type conditions or being euthanized because they caught them in the shelter is reprehensible and with proper husbandry could be minimized. My rescue almost never has URI spread because we practice good isolation techniques and vaccinate with intranasal vaccine immediately upon intake. Since 1995 when we started, we have lost only one kitten to URI/pneumonia, which it had when it came to us. Since that loss in 1996 we have never lost a cat or kitten to URI. True, we don’t deal with then numbers that NY deals with, but I KNOW they could do far better – there is absolutely no reason that so many of these cats should come into the shelter healthy and then catch URI’s. Before I started my own rescue I volunteered with another, larger SC rescue with a shelter (ours uses foster homes only). There we had only a couple of URI outbreaks in 3 years, and we controlled and treated the cats and lost none of them. Things OBVIOUSLY need to be done differently in NY and with the amount of taxpayer, private and in particular Maddie’s money they get, you would think they would be able to do so. Definitely time for reform.
If ACC had a better communication system, with people who would answer the phones at the shelters, and let people who call because they saw an animal on either their website or elsewhere know whether the animal is still available or not, and put the animal on hold until adoptions is over that evening, ACC would get alot more adopters coming into the shelter for that specific animal than now the case. It is almost impossible to get through to the shelter, especially in the morning when they are about to euthanize those on the kill list. Where previously someone from the public was allowed to adopt animals that they saw on Facebook or elsewhere, it seems now they have restricted these animals to only New Hope Partners. ACC needs to also needs to change the time they euthanize the animals in Brooklyn to from 7 am, before the shelter even opens, to later in the morning, to allow for last minute pulls by New Hope Partners, or calls from the public. I believe ACC has told staff not to answer phones in the morning, as it takes too much time away from their duties processing intakes, especially now with reduced staff at the front desk. Above it was stated that ACC is not picking up street animals anymore, but it seems to me ACC is still picking up strays with their vans in response to 311 calls, I have not been able to verify this though I know of a few instances.
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I ask you all to pause for a few minutes and put everything in perspective as I do below. Everything in life is relative. While we all wish to reach our ultimate goal of a no kill NYC immediately, life is not so simple as to permit it. First some background on who I am and why you should consider my perspective.
I go further back in NYC animal control than practically anyone else. Those who know how the NYCACC was born know that I was the force that pushed the ASPCA and the Teamsters Union, which actually controlled the ASPCA, out of animal control in 1995. The ASPCA had provided animal control services in NYC for one hundred years. In the “six year war” that I waged between 1989 and 1995, I spent all of my time in law libraries, at court, in Albany lobbying the NY State Legislature and at the NY City Council. I sued Mayor Dinkins, the NY City Health Department, the ASPCA, the NYPD, the NYC Housing Authority, the Metropolitan Transit Authority. All separate law suits, including some appeals. I authored the language of state legislation which would create independent borough SPCAs so animal control would be provided separately for each borough by a different organization. I got the legislation out of committee and on its way to a full vote by the NY State Legislature the ASPCA unexpectedly announced that it was giving up the animal control contract. I met with then Mayoral candidate Rudy Giulini and updated him with my knowledge of this field, and he founded the NYCACC as a result, as he was consolidating police agencies (Transit, Housing, NYPD) into one and did not want 5 new SPCAs in NYC with humane law powers.
The NY City Council acknowledged my work in resolution #985. However, I was beaten up twice by the Teamsters (they did not appreciate me trying to end a $5 million annual contract which had been in place since 1978) and I had eight fraudulent criminal summonses issued against me by the corrupt Teamster cops. I had an 8 day criminal trial as I had brought contempt charges against Mayor Dinkins for violating the judge’s orders and the DA was determined to prosecute me in retaliation by supporting the bogus criminal summonses. Their hope was that if I got convicted on even one the NY State Legislature would never pass legislation authored by a “criminal.”
This was politics as you only see in the movies. I lived in hiding for six years. I spent my life savings of $50,000 to wage this war. Like many of you I jumped in with my heart and soul as soon as I realized what a horror NYC was for animals. In 1989 we were killing 100,000 plus a year, had virtually no adoptions allowed by the Teamsters, bullets left on the windshields of ASPCA board members, their tires slashed, too many mobster actions to name here. Let it suffice to say that then ASPCA President John Kullberg called me from his home in New Jersey to scream at me that I was jeopardizing my life and the lives of all the ASPCA animals as the Teamsters had threatened to burn down their shelters and kill all the animals if I did not back off. He told me that his phones at the ASPCA were tapped and that was why he was calling me from him home.
Go forward in time 20 years. The DOH and NYCACC are doing everything in their power, within their obvious limitations, to reduce euthanasia and operate a good shelter. Believe it or not, those in positions of leadership have more limitations than those in non-leadership positions. If you find that hard to believe, ask anyone who has been in a leadership position. They have reduced euthanasia from 100,000 plus a year to about 15,000. They have increased adoptions dozens fold, thanks to the Maddie’s Fund and the Mayor’s Alliance, the ASPCA and North Shore Animal League. They have spent millions renovating the Manhattan and Staten Island shelters (though the SI Boro Pres paid for most of the expenses in SI). They fired long time ineffective managers. They hired some new managers who come with high marks from other animal shelters. I have not heard anyone at NYACC or DOH claim that they have reached the ultimate goal. Yet, the critics continue to pounce on them as if they have. Improvements take time, and destructive criticism makes it take longer to achieve.
While I fully understand and empathize the frustration and tears we shed with each and every issue which is not as it could or should be, with each and every angel whose face we will never see again, with each and every passing day that we feel guilt ridden for not doing something more, we must channel our frustration positively, not negatively as I had done to two decades ago. Why? Because there is no bad faith at the DOH or NYCACC, as there was with the organized crime Teamsters. You can DOH and NYCACC of many things EXCEPT bad faith.
Many believe that Dr. Farley, the Health Commissioner, can change everything with a stroke. Come on, let’s be pragmatic. No one, not even the Mayor, the Governor, nor the President can do that. Some believe that by having “animal people” on the NYCACC Board it would solve everything. Come on. Every animal group I have known, dozens, have horrendous animosity amongst members of their Board. We all know that animal people cannot agree on anything
So what’s the solution? How can we help NYCACC get to the ultimate goal quicker? Reaching low/no kill obviously requires a concerted effort by everyone, not just the leadership. So where are the animal people? It is easy to complain, but I do not see anyone coming up with any effective ideas, much less implementing them. NYCACC and DOH were receptive to my proposals for a surrender prevention program and the Low Cost Vet Mobile. Both programs together succeeded in reducing surrenders by 24% within two short years. Given the opportunity, and a well-thought proposal, you may be surprised at the DOH and NYCACC.
We need an annual televised Petathon. It would virtually empty the NYCACC shelters and fill the bank account of the NYCACC so it could do things for its animals it could never do otherwise. In a city of celebrities and corporate giants, it should be the model for all other cities. Currently, only Phoenix and San Diego hold televised Petathons, both of which are very successful. NYC should also be able to. But who is going to pull it all together?
As for the “complaints” leveled by some. Of course, there are valid complaints, but does anyone know how difficult it is to find good staffing for any business? I operate the Low Cost Vet Mobile with about 15 employees, and I can tell you first hand the staffing nightmare I have been thru since we launched 2.5 years ago. I have hired and fired over 150 people, to find the 15 I have now. One out of 10 was satisfactory. It is easy to complain that the NYCACC staff did this or that wrong, but only if you yourself are in the trenches, does your perspective become accurate. How many of you have tried to work at the NYCACC? I don’t mean as New Hope specialist. I mean “in the trenches.” Clean the cages, feed, water, walk, follow protocols, see the faces and bodies of the living after they are dead, the list is endless. And all of this has to be done timely. Many of us have multiple foster animals at home, and should be able to empathize with never having enough time to do all that is necessary, and having to cut corners to meet the most urgent needs first.
We end up taking our frustration out on the leaders, and in this field that is DOH and NYCACC. We are getting close to seeing the well lit path to low/no kill in NYC. However, if we do not come together at this critical juncture and unite to support the NYCACC, we will lose the momentum and the support of the political leadership, which may mean returning to the “old days” I experienced two decades ago. After all, if the political leadership chooses to, all the progress of the recent past can be lost overnight.
There is a saying in business, which applies to society in general. “It takes years to build a relationship, and seconds to lose it.” I have never backed down from doing what is right, regardless of the personal and financial risks, as my story above proves. At this point in time the right thing to do for the animals is to constructively assist the NYCACC to reach the goal that we have all set. No kill NYC.