L.A.'s animal services manager resigns [Updated]

Los Angeles' animal services manager announced today that he is resigning his post.

"I have given a great deal of thought to my experience as a general manager," Ed Boks said in prepared statement. "As I depart, I would like to leave L.A. residents with a call to action that unites rather than divides."

 Boks recently reversed his decision to suspend a program to give low-income residents vouchers for free spaying and neutering of their pets, which prompted an outcry from animal welfare advocates and members of the Los Angeles City Council.

 "Whether you love me or hate me is irrelevant, I simply ask that you now turn your focus to the animals who need your help most," Boks said. "Pet overpopulation is a community problem, and L.A. needs to pull together to resolve it."

The City Council passed a mandatory spay-neuter  law last year -- it went into effect Oct. 1 -- in hopes of lowering the euthanasia rates at animal shelters.

[Updated, 12:45 p.m.: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released the following statement today regarding Boks' resignation:

“I thank Ed Boks for his years of service at the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services. Under his leadership, this City has revamped the way we treat and care for our pets and animals. The ‘no kill’ policy has become a central component of our animal services strategy. Pet adoptions are up and shelters have expanded at a rapid rate. And ‘spay and neuter’ has become more than just a call to action; it is the law in Los Angeles.

“Ed deserves our gratitude for his efforts and our best wishes in the years ahead. We look forward to building on his legacy and continuing to make the Department of Animal Services the gold standard for pet protection.”]

 -- Carla Hall

Comments

[LKitsch]

This guy did an admirable job in a very difficult, one could say "no win" environment. His legacy may be the stepped up efforts to adopt out pets via an innovative and creative marketing and outreach program.

[Meow meow meow]

This is why Boks resigned.
http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2009/04/37536.php

I'm amazed that the Mayor would give him such a positive send off after the horrible job he did here. That's politics for ya.

[CK]

Good riddance.

[Crazy women unite.. the pets!!]

LA,. where psychotic women care more about cats and dogs than they do about human beings, in fact as nice as they are to their pets, that's as heinous as they are in public to human beings.. a very, very sick culture of ritual psychosis there.

[Jeff de la Rosa]

Oh get out already. Enough of your lies.

[Lisa Landera]

What a sociopath. Ed Boks was found liable for racial discrimination yesterday. That was the lynchpin for this firing. It is a shame that it took a federal lawsuit from out of state to get mayor villar to fire this man, instead of for the incompetence he has demosntrated for years. The suffering and death that the mayor has caused is immeasurable. What foolish shelter gm cancels a spaying and neutering program after he is given the gift of a mandatory spaying and neutering law? Only Ed Boks could do something so incompetent.

[Mike]

The mayor gave him such a positive send off because he agreed to resign, rather than be fired or disciplined. It's the honorable way out.

[Nicholas Gerz]

Good Riddance to that guy. NOW BRING BACK THE "KILL" SHELTERS. Kill all these frickin dogs that bark all the frickin time. We don't need any more damn pets in urban society that smell and make noise. KILL ALL DOGS.

[Sara Ramirez]

Now L.A Animal Services will get a New GM that will probably be from the outside AGAIN and who doesn't know anything and everyone will hate him/her too. It's a win/lose situation. I vote for Guerdon Stuckey to come back, HE was the only GM that had made a difference!!!

[Honesty]

He got a $30,000 golden handshake

[James Los Angeles]

You have got to be serious, the mayor is the fox guarding the hen house, throw all of them out, you have organizations from Santa Monica to Downtown LA, developing animal shelters, while homeless humans sleep on the door steps.

Take feed to burnt out communities where horses are lacking, but homeless families stand in drive thru lines begging and they drive right by.

Feed the hungry in distant lands, with many starving right here

Protect the border in the middle east, but leave ours open, watch the devastation of drugs, and want to make it legal.

Preach abstinence and the leaders children end up pregnant out of wedlock.

Right to life for babies to die in battle as adults.

Bring some out of the shadows to put others in the shadows.

Bail out banks, to cheat the stimulus out of citizens.

War on drugs, locks up demand, but supply is okay.

LALA land has changed, and I don't know if its changing for the better.

[Meow Woof]

Ed Boks racked up a dozen lawsuits because of his actions.He cost the city lots of money and embarrassed the Mayor. Now he's claiming he has a medical issue which is why he's leaving. That's what he said to another news station.Search google. Which is it? Medical issue or "I've done such a great job!" It's all bull.

[Kelly]

The Mayor is just as crazy as Bok for hiring him. The way a General Manager is hired should be up to the people who pay the taxes.........We need it changed where the City Council and voters have some say. Hopefully the next one will have a degree in business to maintain a budget, and who honestly cares about saving animals lives & cares for the employees that work for him or her. GET RID OF THE WASTE? What about Barth?Is she leaving with him? She should, & don't let the door hit you on the way out!!!!

[Walter Moore]

That this City routinely kills tens of thousands of perfectly adoptable dogs and cats every year is shameful. There is no excuse for this institutionalized cruelty to animals.

Villaraigosa needs to appoint someone who is serious about saving animals. He needs to select someone who lives here, and who has an actual track record of finding homes for "rescue" animals, not yet another outsider with little or no experience or success in getting the job done.

[maggie van ostrand]

How about giving the job to Bob Barker? He's an ethical, concerned activist on behalf of spay/neuter, and has devoted much of his life and money to helping unwanted animals.

[Jennifer]

Please, no tired old tropes about "people who care more about animals than human beings". That's simply not true save for-perhaps-one in probably 10,000 people. The subject is animal control and welfare--can we keep it on that for just a minute and not veer off into the evils of war, unemployment or drugs?

Animal services in L.A. County have been disgustingly bad since I was a teenager, and I'm 47 now. In our richest days as a city, the old Ann St. shelter was dirty, ugly, smelled worse than any insane cat hoarder's hovel and had mice running openly in the hallways(I saw them when I adopted two cats in '84). Not to mention an ignorant, insufficiently trained staff--a total joke. God knows what they were paid, but no matter how much it was no one seemed to be earning it, or give a toss about the animals or the visitors. Utterly depressing. The "new" main shelter in N.E.L.A. wasn't much better.
I'd despaired of anything ever changing until very recently when it was clear Boks and his team were really trying to effect some kinds of positive changes. To even attempt to go "no-kill" in a city where thousands of irresponsible, many of them stupidly unedicated, "owners" refuse to neuterand let their animals run wild to be hit by cars and otherwise endangered is the REAL cruelty, not euthanizing them(which for many is a mercy given their circumstances). The Pasadena Humane Society is NOT a no-kill shelter, yet it's clean, attractive, and has aggressive adoption and volunteer programs. No one seems to picket them, either.
Until the citizens of Los Angeles are allowed to volunteer/give input and more progressive programs are utilized nothing will change no matter who's in charge. It's just one more example of how incredibly poor our infrastructure and basic services here are. There's no excuse.

[pork chop]

Despite the warnings, the city of Los Angeles passed a draconian mandatory spay/neuter ordinance in 2007. No Kill movement leader Nathan Winograd explains the tragic result here:

Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) General Manager Ed Boks made headlines in his support last year of Assembly Bill 1634, California’s mandatory spay/neuter bill when he admitted that the legislation was more about expanding the bureaucratic power of animal control than saving animals. During a legislative hearing, a Senator asked Ed Boks, the General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) and one of the bill’s chief proponents: “Mr. Boks, this bill doesn’t even pretend to be about saving animals, does it?” To which Boks responded: “No Senator, this is not about saving dogs and cats.”

Not content to wait for the state (which did not pass the measure), Boks convinced the City of Los Angeles to pass its own version. He also demanded more officers to enforce it. The end result was predictable. Almost immediately, LAAS officers threatened poor people with citations if they did not turn over the pets to be killed at LAAS, and that is exactly what occurred. For the first time in a decade, impounds and killing increased—dog deaths increased 24%, while cat deaths increased 35%. In the process, he also fed the backyard breeding market for more (unaltered) animals.

And here:

Since the Cardenas pet killer bill was passed, Los Angeles City shelters have increased the rate of animal killing, the first such increase in better than a decade. And killing is not only up, it is skyrocketing with 35% more cats and 24% more dogs losing their lives. In effect, Cardenas is asking for something that is not possible to do—there is no “success” to report. Instead, the law has been an abysmal failure, something that was not hard to predict.

Bye Bye Ed can you take Marcia Mayerda with you?

[Jack Carone]

We now have a hard-won oppportunity to revolutionize our failing Animal Services Department.
When asked after the exit of Boks, "what now?", Nathan Winograd replied to one concerned L.A. resident(me):

"Now the citizens demand a committee of animal welfare groups to approve the next GM. A GM for the people (animals), by the people (animals), of the people (animals) and accountable to them."

While this presents new challenges, we will now either get more of the same, or begin to build a shelter and adoption program that will set an inspiring example which helps to hasten the reform of the dismal, antiquated and corrupt "shelter" industry. I hope the Mayor does not just repeat the same mistake. This Department will remain in turmoil until it really adopts a new paradigm instead of specializing in spin.
The no-kill model is there and working elsewhere, how can we allow Los Angeles to fail our companion animals?

[don]

Why dont they just make a law that outlaws the selling of cats and dogs?That way you would be forced to get your pet from the shelter and not from pet stores.

[Serrena]

OK, Boks is gone. IMHO, he couldn't have resigned fast enough.
Now what are we going to do about Stu? This dog has been in impound for over four years. He has been deemed NOT DANGEROUS and NOT AGGRESSIVE. Yet, despite his owner's best efforts, the best efforts of the Commissioners on the Board of LA Animal Services, and the best efforts of 1000's of private citizens, he is scheduled to be euthanized July 23, 2009.
Time is of the essence. Please, please go to the following links and familiarize yourself with this travesty of justice. The Due Process violations have all been well-documented. The city of Los Angeles would rather kill this dog than admit and rectify their mistakes. Please help Stu stay alive. He was impounded in his prime. He is now over 10-years old. Help us get him home to live his final years at the side of his loyal human companion, Jefferey.

http://laanimalservicesboardwatch.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/city-news/ed-boks-exits-and-a-dog-named/index.php