County Kill Numbers, stonewalling and Possible fraud

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I had stated that LA County was less transparent than most shelter systems, including LAAS. Brad Jensen opined that County’s figures were more accurate because he was given raw figures that he could crunch, while Boks has been stalling on providing info he requested in January of this year. This may be true, but there is still a lack of transparency in the sense he had to make a request, pay for the material and crunch the numbers. No one else but Brad is likely to do that; therefore I contend County is less transparent than LAAS.

Then again, there is transparent, and "apparently transparent." With Ed's rapidly changing statistics and his wild exagerations lately, we do not know how phony his transparency is.

There was also a comment to a previous post saying County was forthcoming about supplying stats by Bob Ballinger over the phone. I questioned the validity of numbers relayed over the phone. They probably had the same validity as any of Boks' unchecked claims.

I have now received an anonymous email stating Ballinger was no friend of rescue groups and himself would stall on Requests for Records. So we hear two sides of the same coin.

The point I was trying to make is not the ease with which Brad or others receive numbers, nor even the total accuracy of the numbers, but the performance of both agencies, as both are claiming to be the best. Since Mayeda has the data Ed questions, I think it is to her to give him the raw numbers to crunch for himself. Actually, she should also send them to Brad and me, and we'll also crunch her numbers.

County's numbers may be more accurate or not, but my point is that County has a vastly higher kill rate and raw numbers than LAAS. I think if half of LAAS' staff quit and there were no replacements, and Ed were fired with no successor, LAAS would kill fewer animals even given his questionable stats.

Then I received another anonymous email claiming County was bad news and that a former employee was running a shelter that pretended to be a rescue group, which in fact was killing pets with a Schedule II controlled substance—Fatal Plus—without a vet being present.

Rumors such as these are usually inaccurate, and I acknowledge that. However, since I have contacted County supervisors alleging that Mayeda has perpetrated a fraud on the public and supervisors by falsely claiming that 90% of adoptable pets were indeed adopted from their shelter, when in fact they were killing the vast majority, I do expect to receive other allegations of fraud, if not within the County department itself, at least about rescues associated with County employees.

I alleged that her definition of “adoptable” was fraudulent in the sense that no one could believe the County adoption figures based on her definition of adoptable, as they were wildly out of sync with other large public shelter systems and depended Mayeda's use of behavior testing that allowed County to kill about 8,500 dogs for behavioral problems, which is a significant percentage of their impounds.

As I said, these allegations may be entirely made up or are hearsay and totally inaccurate. I don’t have the time to be an investigative reporter, and I await further information to be sent to me.

The emails:

Bob Ballinger used to be the person who would approve or deny a public records act request. You are correct, there's no way that an accurate assessment of records can be made over the phone, and frankly, I would not believe anyone who said X amount were killed. Just like now, suddenly overnight County has a 90% adoption rate!

Bob Ballinger retired around six months to a year ago, but he was no friend to rescue and would stonewall in order to not produce documents or “accidentally” send the wrong information (i.e., I requested impound numbers of owner surrendered animals for a few of the shelters for a two month period, and he sent me a letter with the numbers of animals surrendered, not the impound numbers which I clearly did not ask for. I had to resubmit my request, thus taking even more time.

LA County is bad, bad news.

There is a reason why LA County management is leaving! I just wish I knew someone who would do investigative journalism on why Judy Meraz was "relocated". There are some whopper rumors circulating now.

I do know that Judy Meraz and her husband Jaime, used to borrow Lavonne Rodstein's cabin in Lake Arrowhead. Lavonne Rodstein is or was the Director of Pet Harbor in Gardena, a place that should be investigated. It's a private "rescue" where most of the dogs and cats, if any get adopted, were euthanized on site which is illegal, unless it is done by a vet.

I wonder how they got hold of that "blue juice" aka, Fatal Plus, a DEA controlled substance Schedule 2 Drug? I believe, but I'm not certain that Pet Harbor would tell people that they would adopt out their pets, but were or still are euthanizing them. Sounds like fraud to me, especially if they are accepting donations for intake of someones pets (with the understanding that the pet would be adopted).
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