Two strikes for Mayor's Alliance of NYC

  Injured and abused dogs like Oreo, side-by-side with
  healthy puppies and kittens, are routinely put to death
  by New York City shelters despite promises and promotion
  by the Mayor's Alliance that it would be a No Kill City by
  2008, then 2012, and now 2015. Worse, they are also
  subject to neglect and abuse by the city shelter prior to
  being killed. Meanwhile, both the Mayor's Alliance
  and ASPCA refuse to condemn the lack of care, while
  taking in millions on their so far false No Kill claims.

The Mayor's Alliance promoted the false notion that New York City would be No Kill by 2008. When that failed to happen, they then claimed No Kill would be achieved by 2012. When that also failed to happen, they switched the goal to 2015. But the city pound appears to be moving in the opposite direction, turning away volunteers and rescue groups, while neglecting and abusing animals in their care. Not only does Mayor's Alliance founder Jane Hoffman refuse to publicly condemn these actions, she has worked diligently to defeat a law which would have helped rescue groups save the lives of those animals.

In Part II of this article, a sweeping new Delaware law highlights the hypocrisy of Hoffman and supporters as it relates to Oreo's Law, and how they once again turn to their puppet, Laura Allen, to help them save face.

While the animals in New York City’s Animal Care & Control shelter (AC&C) go without basic care, wallow in waste, receive no socialization, and are allowed to suffer with untreated injuries, the ASPCA and Mayor’s Alliance of New York City are taking in millions of dollars every year by promising that they are working to make New York City a No Kill community by 2015.

There is only one problem: we’ve heard this before. In fact, Jane Hoffman, the recipient of a $23 million grant from Maddie’s Fund and millions more from the ASPCA, promoted the notion to New Yorkers that they would be a No Kill City in 2008. In an article appearing on the Mayor’s Alliance website, we are told that a weekend adoption event was so successful that it “signaled a significant step toward the AC&C's goal of no kill in New York City by 2008.” It didn’t happen.

When that deadline came and went, the Mayor’s Alliance promised it would be 2012. In an article that appeared in New York City News Service, “the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals, a collective of animal rescue and adoption groups, [is] working towards the goal of making New York a no-kill city by 2012.” They admit that won't happen either.

Now Hoffman says they are “on track” for No Kill 2015, rewriting history and ignoring two missed deadlines. And, worse, recent events show that the community is actually moving in the other direction. Less than a month after the ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance succeeded in killing Oreo’s Law, AC&C has announced that it will not allow any new rescue groups to save the lives of animals until a new rescue policy is finalized at the end of August, even though rescue group access is a key component of the No Kill Equation. Oreo’s Law sought to make such conduct illegal. According to rescue groups in New York City, the city pound “has suspended all new rescues that were recently approved.” These allegations were confirmed by e-mails obtained from ACC’s rescue coordinator.

The refusal to work with these groups is already costing the animals their lives. While groups like the ASPCA and Mayor’s Alliance claim that New York City is saving all healthy animals, the pound has contradicted those false assertions, killing hundreds in the process while stating “an overpopulation of adoptable animals requires us to humanely euthanize animals,” even as they are turning away rescue groups for the next two months.

And it gets worse. In addition to claiming they do not have enough food to feed the animals right down the street from the nation’s wealthiest SPCA (the ASPCA took in over $120,000,000 in one year alone), cats and kittens in the “maternity wards” are left without food or water, animals are left wallowing in their own waste, animals are not getting any socialization, and sick animals are not getting the care they need. In fact, the shelter is withholding pain medications from injured animals. Internal documents show a dog who chewed off half his own tail because of substandard care.

While the Mayor’s Alliance and ASPCA take in millions, undermine lifesaving legislation, and refuse to speak out for the animals being neglected and abused at AC&C, other communities—which take in more animals per capita than New York City—have managed to cross the goal line in a fraction of the time.

Washoe County, Nevada, takes in seven times the number of animals per capita and is saving 90% of all animals. And they did it without the ASPCA’s $120,000,000 per year fundraising machine and the Mayor’s Alliance millions. 

*

Part II: Oreo’s Law Update:

Delaware just passed a sweeping shelter reform bill into law. The law requires shelters to give animals to rescue groups instead of killing them, exactly as Oreo’s Law, the bill killed by Hoffman and Sayres, tried to do. While Hoffman and Sayres condemned an estimated 25,000 animals rescue groups are willing to save but shelters are committed to killing to death each and every year in New York State, they are reeling from the fallout of the Delaware law passage, which did not receive a single vote in opposition.

To learn more about why, click here.

In order to defray criticism, Hoffman’s puppet, Laura Allen of the Animal Law Coalition, is rewriting history herself to embrace the Delaware law, though she helped kill Oreo’s Law through an intentional misreading of the California Law upon which both Oreo’s Law and the Delaware Companion Animal Protection Act are based. In supporting the Delaware Law, she says shelters should turn over animals to rescue groups before killing them. In her opposition to Oreo’s Law, Allen claims we should respect the decisions of shelters to kill animals and that rescue groups should not be allowed to save them. Which is it?

But while embracing an irreconcilable contradiction, Allen’s hypocrisy goes further because while she argues that a NYS shelter’s decision to kill an animal should not be subject to review—even when it means those animals are killed while rescue groups willing to save them are turned away—this viewpoint is unacceptable for her own dog. When it comes to the life of her own animal, Allen has an altogether different standard. In opposing Oreo’s Law, she is opposing legislation mandating action which saved her own dog from death.

Allen has never worked in an animal control shelter, and perhaps has never even been to one—except in Seattle, where her and her husband’s dog was impounded after biting someone, was determined to be dangerous, and was sentenced to death. Instead of respecting the decision of the shelter as she admonishes others to do, Allen and husband Russ Mead enlisted a rescue group, Best Friends, to save their own dog’s life from a shelter determined to kill him. And Best Friends did. It sounds remarkably similar to Oreo, where Pets Alive offered lifetime care. The difference of course is that Oreo was not adjudicated to be dangerous by a court and never attacked anyone. The other difference is that, in the case of Allen’s dog, the rescue group was given the ability to save a life by being rescued from the shelter, while Oreo, and the thousands of anonymous dogs and cats unknown to her at shelters throughout NYS, Allen’s viewpoint seeks to condemn to death.

Perhaps most ironically of all, Allen has the hubris to say that the supporters of Oreo's Law should have embraced the concepts in the Delaware Law, even though the rescue access provisions in both are based on the California Law she disparages, and both were written in part by the same person. In fact the supporters of the California Law, Delaware Law, and New York Law are one and the same.

Learn more by clicking here.

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