Staycee Dains was approximately one month in a job that supervises animal shelters in the city of Los Angeles when an employee challenged her openly.
Dains asked the employee to clean a kennel. Instead, the employee picked up a hose and sprayed a dog on his face, Dains said.
Dains thought the employee should be a fire, but said that the city personnel department recommended five days of license.
Mayor Karen Bass hired Dains in June 2023 after promising to make Los Angeles “a national model for animal welfare” turning their shelters with problems, where dogs can live in crowded and dirty kennels and have not complained the Talleers.
But in an interview with El Times, Dains said he felt helpless to solve entrenched problems that included serious staff and employees who mistreated or neglecting animals.
She said the personnel department repeatedly told her, what works as a human resources department in a private company, that she could not fire problematic employees. He also collided with one of the unions that represents refuge employees.
At one point, Dains just contact the prosecutors of Los Angeles County to get help.
Meanwhile, while Wesred overcrowding, more dogs and cats were sacrificed in city shelters under their clock than in the previous years.
“We need to tell the truth without filtering and without flying about what is happening in the shelters,” Dains said.
In August, after a little more than a year as General Manager of Animal Services, he returns the paid license. A few days later, a UP advisor told Dains that the last day would be November 30 and that he was free to resign before that.
Zach Seidl, a bass spokesman, backed away Dains’s accusations.
“Many of these characterizations are misleading and some are simply inaccurate,” he said in an email.
Dains, in a series of interviews, said that the city does not provide enough funds to meet the basic needs of animals in their six shelters.
Duration of the first year of Bass in office, amid critical reports for the times and others on the conditions in the shelters, the mayor offered an increase in the 18% budget, much less than 56% that the Department of Animal Services had requested. The following fiscal year, his budget proposal slightly reduced the funds of the departments.
Last week, by approving a budget that closed a deficit of almost $ 1 billion, the City Council avoided the animal services of the main cuts.
Dains, who previously had the best shelter works in San José and Long Beach, said his employees were desensitized by the suffering of animals after witnessing it day after day. The lack of staff was so bad that people was an answer for 500 dogs: cleaning dog, establishing adoptions and working on the medical team, he said.
“I couldn’t sleep knowing that animals were suffering in those holes in hell,” said Dains, who now works in a refuge system in Sacramento. “It was horrible.”
Dains, who won around $ 273,000 a year in Los Angeles, said he witnessed that some of his employees “terrified” dogs hitting their dogs or sprinkling them with water to get away. She told employees to stop the behavior, but some said they had trained to treat dogs that way, he said.
To ensure that the animals feed and clean their enclosures, Dains suggested to start a schedule that traced when each task was performed. But a union representative worried that the information could be used to punish employees, Dains said.
Ultimately, Dains said, he withdrew the proposal due to the opposition of the Union, the International Union of Workers of the Local North America 300. A representative of the Union declined to comment.
Dain said that personal entanglements and gossip among employees sometimes made it difficult to hold them.
Some supervisors had a sexual relationship with their subordinates, which led them to overlook employees’ poor job performance, according to the DAIS. Others used the “land” they had in co -workers to protest when they faced their own behavior, he said.
Dains said he suspended that some employees were sleeping spinning at night instead of cleaning cages or paperwork. He showed the Times a photo of dogs for dogs arranged on the floor of a personnel room like a “nest.”
She said she was also witnessing employees who saw videos on her phones, instead of working. Others ignored the people who entered the shelter seeking to adopt a pet, he said. Some employees told him that colleagues could not give food or water to cats and dogs.
At the same time, said Dains, other employees were “beyond constantly” to compensate those who do not achieve their weight.
“There is a significant part of the staff that is simply not doing their job,” he said. “I saw this constantly.”
Dains gave some guilt to supervisors, who “did not demand acting.”
When he tried to discipline supervisors, he faced a rejection, he said.
After putting a license supervisor who was accused of intimidating people, Dains said Dains, Dains said.
A personnel department spokesman declined to comment.
At the same time, Dains acknowledged that he should have a harder bone in some of the general managers attending them directly to it. But she said she wanted to carry out labor relations with the issue.
It is “something difficult to do to start writing executive level managers with which you are trying to work,” he said.
A shelter employee, who requested anonymity because he had no permission to talk to the media, agreed with the DININS evaluation.
“There is no responsibility, there is no repercussions,” he said. “And the staff that works have to work twice as hard.”
A report last year of Best Friends Animal Society, who highlighted the bad conditions in the shelters and suggested possible solutions, criticized Dains as the “biggest barrier” to improve.
The shelters lacked written protocols, and Euthanasia policy “changed five times in the last year” without communication on changes, according to the report.
According to an analysis of the Times, the number of dogs sacrificed in shelters in the city from January to September of last year increased by 72% compared to the same period of the previous year. The number of dogs entering shelters increased every year since 2022, but the killed number far exceeds the increase in the population.
Under crowded conditions, animals began to be bad and suffered “mental and emotional collapse,” according to the report of the best friends. That made them less likely to be adopted and more likely to be sacrificed.
Dains, in the interview with The Times, defended his euthanasia decisions, arguing that it was safe for animals, staff, volunteers or the public “store” dogs in kennels or years.
She said there was no euthanasia policy when she arrived and that the department was creating one.
Bass was the chief of Dains, but the main contact of Dains was Jacqueline Hamilton, Vicaldea of neighborhood services. Dains said he spoke with Hamilton and told him about staff problems and other problems. But Hamilton did not sacrifice any significant help and did not want to advertise the bad conditions in the shelters, Dains said.
“I am not receiving any movement or traction,” Dains told Times, describing his work experience.
Seidl, Bass spokesman said that Dains “received support from the success, including attendance to communicate the state of the department to the public and decision makers.”
Dains said that shortly after becoming a general manager, he asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Kimberly Abourezk, who worked in cases of animal cruelty, to send a letter to the mayor about poor conditions in shelters.
Venusse D. Dunn, spokesman for the District Prosecutor’s Office, said Abourezk did not send the letter because he visited animals in the city and found no evidence of any crime.
The office “is not in a position to tell another agency how to operate its facilities,” said Dunn.
Annette Ramírez, a lifelong animal services employee, is now an interim general manager. The “severe overcrowding crisis”, as described by the department in the press release this month, continues.
