0
On Friday Carson shelter manager Gil Moreno abruptly resigned from his position at the shelter. This comes a few months after the shakeup at Baldwin Park, where then manager Lance Hunter resigned from his position to go join the ASPCA. Since that time it seems that the highest of decision makers at Baldwin Park are reversing course and moving in a backwards fashion. Ric Browde made this statement on his blog back in May…
This week despite having over 30 empty kennels on May 10th, the shelter staff was being ordered to kill. Adoptable dogs were being given deadly Marcia Mayeda cocktails and staff and volunteer morale plummeted as the number of barrels full of pet carcasses inside the shelter’s freezers soared.
^This matches what I personally witnessed at the Carson shelter when I was there to visit with and photograph the dogs on June 4th, counting 39 empty kennels and then coming to find out that they were still killing that morning.
With Moreno’s tenure over, Alonzo Real will now become acting shelter manager until a replacement can be found and hired. I’d like to formally throw my hat into the ring as someone who would be extremely interested in partnering with whatever new leadership they bring on, but this seems extremely unlikely considering Marcia Mayeda and L.A. County rejected my application to become a volunteer due to what they called an “ongoing conflict with the department.” That’s another way of saying that if I’m not set on being a shill for a horribly run system, that they don’t need my help, free or otherwise.
They also forced my girlfriend out of the volunteer system, due to her refusing to sign a selectively enforced document written only for her that mandated that she adhere to an in-house breed-specific policy that goes against everything just and decent for the dogs. Prior to this she was “suspended” for taking out Pit Bulls that had not yet been temperament tested, which is a complete racket considering most of their Pit Bulls never even get temperament tested (to the few that eventually do, it routinely takes staff over a week to do them after it’s been requested), and thus, sit in their cages without interaction until they are killed.
So why did Gil resign? Was he going to be fired? Was his resignation just a move to save his pension? All questions without any on the record answers. What I do know is that in my 3+ years of visiting the Carson shelter I’ve never seen a poorer run place. The foundation of control, prejudice, vindictiveness and retaliation has defined my coverage of this shelter. It will forever be encapsulated on this website.
Moreno aside, the crux of any argument made against any L.A. County shelter will always lead back to its atrociously entrenched director Marcia Mayeda. She’s the one that’s been most deserving of being fired for well over a decade, and instead was just shockingly given a raise in 2014. You can blame the L.A. County Board of Supervisors for that one. Last month the interim job at the Baldwin Park shelter was given to Gayle Miley, who proceeded to immediately alienate volunteers in a myriad of ways. Worse, Marcia Mayeda has since hired the infamous Pat Claerbout of the Stockton animal shelter to take over at Baldwin, signifying her continued desire of reorganizing deck chairs on the Titanic.
To close, I will attach my last exchange with Gil, which gives insight into 1 gigantic misstep that ended up costing a wonderful dog his life. How many times this shit happened without anyone there to recognize it, document it, raise hell on the dog’s behalf, we will never know…
On the morning of 6/4/2014 the Carson shelter opted to kill Brownie (#A4709410) while he had a CTA in place and an adopting family that would show up onsite hours later to get him. That same day I was at the shelter and counted 39 empty kennels. The excuse given for why he was euthanized? He was “sick.”
