Scandal at Los Angeles Animal Shelter

LA Animal Services is the subject of an internal investigation surrounding missing animals. At first, it sounds like employees may have been taking them, but volunteers had access too....

Excerpt from CityWatch...

Brenda Barnette, General Manager of the Animal Services Department, said 64 animals have disappeared from six shelters in roughly a year,” Zanhiser reports. “Of that total, 39 were housed at the city's North Central shelter on Lacy Street — a missing rate considered unusually high.”

“They were the young ones, the cute ones,” Barnette said. "They were ones that would have been likely to have been sold or be a nice gift for someone." The majority of the unaccounted-for animals were dogs, Barnette said.”

At a recent Encino Neighborhood Council meeting Ms. Barnette announced that her LA Animal Services staff has a “few bad apples”—not exactly the public description you expect from a City manager. This week she disclosed that she went to Mayor Villaraigosa and LAPD, plus Human Resources to ask them to help sniff out what happened to 64 animals—mostly dogs—missing from over 68,000 impounded this year at six city shelters.

Ms. Barnette apparently failed to mention that early this year she personally ordered that volunteers are to have keys to the kennels to remove animals at any time. The type of key she made available is reportedly the universal key that provides access to all city facilities and is not marked “Do Not Duplicate.” She also reportedly did not set up a standard procedure for monitoring the issuance and use of the keys.