Rick Orlov wrote an extremely inaccurate exoneration of Ed Boks this morning, more or less blaming everyone but Ed Boks for his problems. It appears that to save his job at the failing Daily News, he decided to write the most outrageous and slanted article possible to create his own firestorm of controversy.
1. Orlov blames Boks’ problems on, “Unhappy political bosses looking to divert attention from their own offices.” Does he mean Zine, Cardenas and Alarcon? I'll bet they are glad to hear that.
2. Orlov blames Boks’ problems on animal activists, providing examples of the “rage that animal activists have directed towards Boks.”
3. Then Orlov seems to blame the entire LA animal community and Council, as well as staff with all their criticisms for making the job of general manager impossible for anyone.
Orlov writes, “...how long he will be able to withstand the firestorm that seems eventually surround every director of Animal Services.”
4. Orlov writes, “In the past decade alone, the department has had four permanent directors replaced, plus a number of lower-level officials who fled after the threats became too much.”
He says Dan Knapp was replaced when hospitalized for nervous seizures said to be related to job pressures, followed by Greenwalt who resigned after protests at his home by animal activists. Then he mentions Stuckey’s job as so tenuous and threatening that his wife refused to move to LA.
Orlov says that under Boks, the euthanasia rate has dropped from more than 23,000 to about 18,000 in the past year.
Mr. Orlov, let us do the fact check you failed to do.
First, the euthanasia rate has never been at 23,000 since Boks has started. He started on January 1, 2006. Since that time euthanasia has fluctuated from about 19,500 when he started, down to about 15,500 then back up to 19,500 now. How is that progress towards no kill?
Dan Knapp had epilepsy, not some nebulous nervous seizures, and was suffering from “static gran mal seizures,” meaning they were happening all the time. Knapp hid his condition from the City until after he started. The animal community more or less loved him until the mayor made him round up street dogs prior to the Democratic Convention in 2000. He was fired by the Mayor while he was in the hospital.
Stuckey never had any animal experience before coming on the job. He was a community outreach director in a small city back East, and didn’t have a clue as to how to run the dept. he didn't even have a dog or cat himself.
Greenwalt was just another hack bureaucrat waiting out his time for his pension and who had been fired for incompetence from Animal Services by Knapp a year before Greenwalt took over. He retired, and did not resign.
Orlov inaccurately quotes Zine. “Zine chairs the council's Personnel Committee and he said he has compiled boxes of complaints from employees over how Boks runs the agency.” In fact, Zine showed Council one large full box of complaints from staff as well as emails from the animal community and others about Boks. Zine was making a point that it was not just the animal community that opposed him.
It is these little yet glaring errors of fact that allows Orlov to lay the blame for Boks’ messes at everyone else’s doorsteps but Boks’.
Where did Rick receive his training as a reporter, Costco?
