The reason you'll never see these stats is that Boks is not too hot on analysis. He appears to like flying by the seat of his pants. He has refused volunteer help for technical analysis from multiple sources including a former shelter director, me, and many others.
Scott Sorentino had the opinion that as you expand the shelters and the holding capacity of the shelters, all income and outcome statistics would increase: impounds, adoptions, euth, RTO, etc. because more animals would be impounded.
Boks claims the approximate 25% increase in impounds was due to the economic downturn.
The statistics below show that in most cases the new shelters do not cause a lot more animals to be impounded. Another set of figures from Brad Jensen show clearly that adoptions take off after a new shelter opens.
What the charts in the pdf below do show is that the overall increase in impounds appear more related to the economic downturn and mortgage problems. The flood of increased impounds began during June last year, has continued and is still climbing.
The shelters opened at various dates and the only shelter that seemed to show a New Shelter effect is West LA.
Brad Jensen's numbers and charts:
http://itisnotreal.com/LAAS-DownturnNewShelter.pdf
Very strangely, the Annex showed no change do to the economy. This probably is because of policy.
4 comments:
Boks does not care about numbers, statistics, charts, graphs or even animals for that matter. He will just do his own spin anyway. He can create any chart, percentages that he wants. He makes the statistics fit his message "I made LA nokill already!" The city council, mayor and public will believe his bullshit.
The city council and especially the Mayor do not CARE whether what Ed Boks says is true.
They don't care if animals die because Boks is a bad manager, and they don't care if they die because L.A. Civil Service allows incompetents and sadists to keep their jobs.
They don't care if animals die - period. Animals don't give them money, and they can't lie to an animal to get their vote.
Given that set of facts, what do we do to MAKE them care?
Hummm..
ALF maybe?
I have mixed feelings about ALF. I wholeheartedly support going into labs and taking the animals out. I think if ALF stuck to that they'd have a lot more community support (although I recognize the logistical issue of showing what happens to the animals, showing the animals themselves -- and not getting the show-er arrested).
I don't think tactics like vandalizing people's relatives' houses (even bad actors like Jim Bickhart, Jimmy Blackman, even Villaraigosa, etc.) helps them or the cause much. I think the public, if they even find out, just feel sorry for the relatives. We all have relatives we'd rather not be judged by. I think it's fair to say that once your son is in his forties (or more...) you can't be held responsible for what he does to further his sad political career.
I really don't think sticking fake or real bombs in researchers' homes or cars helps at all. It's hard to make the argument that freeing rabbits is terrorism, but planting bombs really is, and that's just not going to win hearts and minds, which is what has to happen for things to change.
Saving shelter animals, saving lab animals, and documenting the conditions from which they're being saved is really the best way.
There was an article recently on msnbc.com that discussed how more kids are becoming vegetarians (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28543713/) and it attributes this increase in part to the ready availabilty of video showing slaughter, factory farming conditions, etc. on sites like YouTube.
This is important. I hope every animal rights group understands that's how this is going to work. I was a vegetarian for fifteen years, but since the Hallmark/Westland and Gemperle Farms videos I have gone 85 - 95% vegan (and still working on it...)
Video of mistreatment of animals, and hopefullly some suggestion of a solution is what's going to start to make this turn around.
Of course, Ed Boks resigning would help a lot too...
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