KCACC Fails In Animal Care As Well As Control
BY: Co-chairs, KCACC Exposed 9/13/2009
Finally, someone has taken notice of the fact that the irresponsible policies of King County Animal Care and Control are leaving the King County community in danger.The day after our blog, “KCACC Failures Endanger Community,” the Seattle Times has released a front page article titled “Dog-attack victims wait days or weeks for a response.”
The Seattle Times got part of the story right. KCACC’s lack of response to animal control calls is shameful and irresponsible, and puts the King County community at risk. This is nothing less than a betrayal of the public trust.
But the Seattle Times gets it wrong with the implication that this delayed response has come as a consequence of improved conditions at KCACC’s animal shelters. To the contrary, this failure only illustrates KCACC’s inability to perform any part of its mission competently. As KCACC Exposed has thoroughly documented, KCACC still maintains its animals in deplorable conditions, does a woefully inadequate job of investigating animal cruelty complaints, and also fails to protect the public by refusing to respond to calls about aggressive, free-roaming dogs.
In other words, KCACC is a failure in every respect. This isn’t news to anyone who has been following the agency for the past two years.
The obvious solution? Move at least some, if not all, of KCACC’s responsibilities to agencies or organizations that are able to do the job competently and efficiently.
KCACC Exposed has long demanded that animal cruelty investigations be handed over to qualified law enforcement officials, such as the King County Sheriff’s Office. We have also insisted that sheltering duties should be turned over to an organization such as the Seattle Humane Society, which can provide far better care for the animals than King County, at a reduced cost.
Perhaps if KCACC was left only with animal control, it would be able to perform those duties competently.
With another massive deficit looming, and the threat of flooding from the Green River forcing the county to consider relocating the KCACC shelter in Kent, it is time for the King County Executive and the King County Council to take another hard look at these options.
Simply cutting KCACC’s budget, as King County Executive Kurt Triplett proposed earlier this year, is not an answer. You cannot cut the budget of an agency that is falling short in every respect, and not expect conditions and services to get even worse.
Transferring money to animal control, and away from animal care, is also not the answer.
Because, despite KCACC’s self-serving representations in the Seattle Times article, conditions at its shelters have not improved from 2007.
In spite of the addition of an officer to do off-site adoptions, for example, KCACC’s adoption numbers actually declined, from 5,085 in 2007 to 4,519 in 2008. Although KCACC may be spending more money on veterinary care, it has still not taken the most basic of steps – such as isolating contagious animals from healthy animals – to improve the health of the animals in its shelter. In fact, KCACC staff report that it is still “almost inevitable” that every cat, and most of the dogs, who come into the shelter will become sick and require veterinary treatment.
KCACC statistics confirm the truth of these observations. While KCACC recordkeeping is riddled with holes and inaccuracies, as well as ample opportunity for manipulation, its statistics nevertheless show an alarming decline in the quality of life for animals at KCACC shelters. (Check back here for a complete article about KCACC’s statistics next week).
For example, even though KCACC drastically undercounts deaths in foster care, its “death in care” statistics are still shockingly high. According to KCACC’s claimed outcomes, there were 246 animals who died in custody in 2008, a 52 percent increase from 2007. This number does not count the 204 animals counted as “disposed” who came into the shelter alive, all of whom should probably be moved into the “died” category.
Death in care statistics are considered one of the primary signals of declining shelter conditions. Indeed, the U.C. Davis report found it very alarming that just 162 animals died in care in 2007, and warned the county to carefully watch these statistics as indicators of worsening standards of animal care.
Said the U.C. Davis veterinarians on page 19 of their report: “This shift from euthanasia of healthy animals ‘for space‘ to euthanasia of animals who have become severely ill or who are dying in shelter care does not represent progress for animal welfare or the life saving capacity of the community. It represents a ‘loophole’ that encourages poor welfare rather than a progressive plan to meet the goal of reducing euthanasia.”
Indeed, KCACC staff members report their frustrations trying to get a veterinarian to treat severely ill animals, and having no choice but to watch some animals slowly die. Other animals reportedly go days, if not weeks, without eating because they are too sick to eat on their own. Although some staff members have voiced these concerns to King County’s elected officials, no action has been taken to correct these conditions. Once again, KCACC’s records confirm the staff accounts of neglect, showing animals who languished in shelter cages for more than six months before dying a slow, miserable death.
Adding to these disturbing numbers are extremely high numbers of missing animals – during 2008, KCACC reported 81 animals were missing and never found. In functional shelters, a missing animal who is never found again is an extremely rare occurrence. As a result, the U.C. Davis veterinarians once again noted that these numbers needed to be watched closely, expressing alarm over 60 cats who had gone missing in 2007.
“Closely monitor numbers of lost and missing animals,” warned the veterinarians on p. 26 of their report. “Even small numbers or increases in lost or missing animals should be cause for concern as they may be early warning signs of a lack of functional systems for animal care.”
Perhaps the most alarming statistic of all is this: If you add together the number of animals who went missing or died in their cages in 2008 (81 + 246), one animal dies in its cage or goes permanently missing nearly every single every day at KCACC. In the sheltering world, this is an astronomical number.
By contrast, the Seattle Humane Society in Bellevue reported 30 animals who died in custody and foster care from June 2008 to May 2009, and 5 animals (including two mice) who went permanently missing. These 35 animals total less than 0.5% of Seattle Humane’s outcomes, while KCACC’s dead and missing animals account for more than 4.0% of its outcomes.
So if KCACC is not taking better care of its animals, how did it achieve the much-ballyhooed 21% euthanasia rate in 2008?
First, if you add in KCACC’s dead and missing animals, the shelter death rate was actually 25%. Since these animals were not “euthanized,” KCACC tries to hide them within its numbers as if they were positive outcomes.
Second, as the King County auditor will no doubt find in its upcoming report, KCACC statistics are so erratic and unreliable that it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions from the numbers that they proclaim. (More on this coming soon in our full report on KCACC’s statistics.)
Third, even if KCACC’s numbers are taken at face value, the decline in their death rate has nothing to do with improved animal care, or more aggressive adoption or outreach policies. To the contrary, KCACC’s adoption numbers have actually decreased. Indeed, the difference in the number of animals killed at KCACC results solely from a 15% decrease in the number of intakes from 2007 to 2008, and an 11 % increase in the number of transfers to other animal shelters and rescue groups.
In other words, KCACC has reduced its “euthanasia rate,” by allowing animals to die in their cages so that they will not be counted, and by decreasing its intake – in part, by stopping all functional efforts at animal control, and closing its shelter doors to intakes for several weeks of the year. The only increase in lifesaving has been the result of other regional organizations stepping up their efforts to help animals escape from KCACC, not through any effort that KCACC has made on its own.
We applaud the fact that the Seattle Times has taken a hard look at KCACC’s failure to protect the public from free-roaming, aggressive dogs. Finally, someone is paying attention to this very dangerous problem.
But we hope that the Times, and King County’s public officials, will take a look at the other side of the story. Not only is KCACC failing to keep the citizens of King County safe, it is also still failing to provide humane care to the animals in its facilities.
This failure on all fronts is not the result of the King County Council’s May 2007 legislation. It is not the product of “No Kill” sheltering, or any other sheltering philosophy. And, given that the Seattle Humane Society offered last year to do the same job for less money, it is not a simple matter of economics.
It is incompetence. Pure and simple. How much longer are we going to stand for it?