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I think Ed Boks has got the message loud and clear from the animal community that we want a rapid and immediate reduction in the kill rates and an increase in the live save rate.
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We will not wait for another set of year-end stats showing he made no progress, but the department runs better.
If he is the No Kill expert he claims he is, why to we have to wait three or four years to measure success or even heading towards success?
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His much delayed April report must contain the long-promised five year plan to no kill. By that time all new and renovated shelters will be operational and all vets aboard. By that time he should have gotten rid of the LAAS employees that hold back progress.
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By now he should have developed a plan to get from A to B. If not, what confidence can we have in him? Otherwise, he is just asking us to trust him. So far he has not earned that trust.
There must be milestones and benchmarks in his plan. There should be an outside audit by truly independent experts. That audit needs to includes the internals of Chameleon and tracking. There are far more questions raised than answered by the stats he released. For example, during 2006, approximately 1,700 animals had premature releases in obvious violation of the Hayden Act, and, according to him, would all otherwise be killed due to being unweaned, sick or injured.
We must allow for continued premature releases of unweaned animals or injured to rescuers associated with a NH organization or not. The Hayden Act needs to be changed if these were truly unweaned or ill animals. If not, even more animals would die. But we do need to know why those 1,700 were released early and to whom. Only a small part were released to NH partners. Were many cherry-picked animals to friends of LAAS as in the past? In any event, even after being adopted out, these premature releases should have their photos remain posted on the web for a couple of weeks and at kiosks in the shelters themselves so owners can find their pets.
Let's forget about his personal life and what he did or didn't do in New York and Maricopa, but let us watch and comment on what he is doing here and now.
I will provide more analyses of 2006 stats, especially for cats. Concerning stats, more questions were raised than answered. He appears to be stonewalling on providing all the stats asked for, complaining staff cannot take the time, or pretending he does not understand the statistics asked of him. This is selective transparency, not the true tansparency he claims.
The total number of cats killed on their first day of impound for all of 2006, not the 9 months I presented before, is:
5,889!
This is close to 1/3 of all cats impounded! They were killed the same day they were brought in.
By day 14, close to 12,000 had been killed.
Dogs got better treatment all around. This is not fair. Cats need an equal right to life. He needs to address this NOW!
Lastly, he needs to stop going after rescuers who are critics and making press releases about how LAAS stomped a rescuer, such as the one about a woman with 18 cats being busted. A lot of rescuers have that number or more.
It seems he is putting his critics on notice that their animals are at risk.
We've already given Boks over a year to show some results, and he's failed. I say he should be fired if there is no significant improvement in the euthanasia rate by midyear. We need to see an improvement to make up for the lack of improvement in all of 2006, and I hope he doesn't just hold onto the animals longer.
ReplyDeleteBoks promised nokill by 2010. He said he would try for 2008. What five year plan are you talking about?
I do think the commission should look into those Hayden act violations. He admitted to 1,700 violations, i.e. animals released to rescuers early. What if some of those animals were someone's pet? Those animals should have been fostered with their profiles saved in the system so owners could find them. Then after the allotted time, they could remove the profiles and log the animals as adopted to rescuers.
The woman pled guilty to animal cruelty, aka animal abuse. She was charged with animal cruelty and having too many cats. He should have worked with a rescue group instead of just impounding, killing the animals.
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