Welcome to the Jungle
Protest! Smoke bombs! Euthanasia videos! Resistance to L.A. Animal Services chief Guerdon Stuckey ha
By Annette Stark
A year is a long time in city politics, where whole careers can flash by in only a couple of years. So, it's hard to figure why Guerdon Stuckey is still stuck in a tight spot with the humane community. Even the people who felt he could turn things around when he first took the job are now shaking their heads. If anything, his conflict with animal advocates has gotten worse. A lot of animal folks who didn't originally oppose Stuckey's 2004 appointment as general manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) by former Mayor James Hahn have joined the other side. If there was ever a moment for Stuckey to win over his critics, it appears to have passed.
"I saw him the other night at the Singita event," said wildlife rescuer Mary Cummins, founder of volunteer group Animal Advocates. "He went up to the ticket table looking for a ticket. They didn't have one for him. I got a free ticket, others did, but it was a fundraiser so, of course, some had to pay. He had to pay. He then walked around, and no one spoke to him. I walked over and introduced him to Leon Seidman of Cosmic Pet Products."
Singita is a charity created to establish a feral-cat sanctuary outside the city. It's the five-year dream of late comedian Buddy Hackett and his widow Sherry, who is still a very vocal supporter of Stuckey. Seidman, a longtime friend of Hackett's, is the largest producer of catnip in the world.
Talking with Stuckey, Seidman suggested little stores at the city shelters where people could buy things for their new pets. Cummins said Stuckey shot down the idea, complaining that such a thing would be impossible. "[Stuckey] said L.A. is the most bureaucratic city he's ever seen, and people don't realize he's doing the best job he can, and it just takes forever to get things done," said Cummins.
"Before he came to L.A., I sent him an e-mail," she added. "I thought he should know what it's really like here. I sent him some news items on the activists ... . I thought: If I were his wife and was going into a hotbed of activist activity, I'd want to know.'"
One year later, a hurricane of e-mails and faxes berating Stuckey continued to pile up at LAAS. They asked why he won't meet with nationally recognized no-kill expert Nathan Winograd (who just met with the mayor last weekend). They wanted to know what happened to the spaymobile contract he apparently bungled. And they wondered why popular choices for GM had been passed over, such as powerhouse litigator Theresa Macellaro, who has served as counsel for Hahn, ex-Mayor Dick Riordan, the City of Los Angeles, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name a few.
Worse, these critics wanted to know what happened to the campaign promise of Antonio Villaraigosa himself, who insisted, "When I am mayor, [Guerdon] Stuckey will not be head of Animal Services."
Over the last few months, the mayor threw that question back to L.A.'s animal-advocacy community. As pickets at city officials' homes grew more contentious, and smoke bombs wafted through Stuckey's house, Villaraigosa felt liberated from any campaign promises. Even though the illegal smoke bombs were claimed by the underground network Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and had no connection whatsoever to legal humane-community activists, the mayor said he wasn't going to be "bullied" into firing anyone.
Instead, it became open season on activism. A commissioner was fired and said two others would be next, allegedly for being animal "advocates." A shelter doctor was fired for similar reasons, without the mayor's knowledge.
The whole of Animal Services, it seemed, was in chaos. At the heart of the disarray was a question: What is "advocacy"? How much could someone love animals and still be part of the city's animal team? Just what the hell was going on over there?
Many of these "advocates" campaigned for Villaraigosa, but he's evidently over it. The one meeting he had with Animal Defense League Los Angeles (ADLLA) on October 21 did not come off well. "The mayor agreed that he promised to fire Stuckey, but he said he 'had made a lot of promises,'" Dr. Jerry Vlasak, press officer for ADLLA, told CityBeat via e-mail. "He then stated as long as 'activists' were targeting Stuckey he would not be 'bullied' into firing him."
And the waffling goes on. When pressed by this reporter about Stuckey's status, administration spokesperson Janelle Erickson repeatedly dodged the question.: "Mayor Villaraigosa intends to uphold his pledge to reform the Department of Animal Services ... . Nothing has changed. The mayor is working hard every day to face many of the city's challenges, and reforming the department is one of those."
In late July, animal rescuer Daniel Guss, creator of the STAND Foundation (for Stop Torture Abuse & Neglect of Dogs), began e-mailing his now famous "100 Reasons to Fire Stuckey." He also purchased the websites Antonio2008.com, Antonio2012.com, and mayormentiroso.com - which means "lying mayor" in Spanish. When and if Villaraigosa does fire Stuckey, Guss might turn these domain names over to the Democratic National Committee.
ADLLA's website now features a photo of Villaraigosa, its onetime hero, with the caption "One Thousand Lies."
"One, two, three, what are we fighting for?"
On the evening of September 16, a small smoke device was set off at the Bunker Hill apartment building where Stuckey lives with his wife. Neither was home at the time. The LAPD confirmed the incident the following week and said it had placed more protective forces around the GM. The militant ALF claimed responsibility in a communiqué.
The attack was condemned in a subsequent LAAS meeting, but, according to former LAAS commissioner Erika Brunson, "The damage was done. Everything changed, and he [Stuckey] became the victim. They [the administration] are now rallying their forces to protect him."
Stuckey told CityBeat several days later that he "isn't afraid," but his friend and supporter Sherry Hackett said that doesn't mean he can work with the activists. "If you're a good businessperson, you bring people together," she said. "Guerdon's done this, and now he has a battle ... . I don't know if these people can be reasoned with. They're zealots."
From the beginning, Hackett said, Stuckey reached out to help. "I can collect 20 people who are sound citizens in the community who can say this man is bright, articulate," she said. "So he doesn't know about animals?
"We have our feral-cat program that we submitted five years ago, and the previous manager never supported it," she continued. "Guerdon supported it. It's very important to achieve the [no-kill] objective that ex-Mayor Hahn expressed. But for him to have gotten all this done in two years - it's lunacy for them to say that, and they've alienated people like us."
Of course, you can't be ADLLA founder Pam Ferdin if you're worried about alienating people. She has a bullhorn, picket signs that say "puppy killer," and a high tolerance for legally disturbing the bureaucratic peace.
The ADLLA people are very thick-skinned: At a demonstration on the block of LAAS Commander David Diliberto, neighbors called Ferdin "cunt" and "bitch" and squirted the protesters with garden hoses. At the home of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 347 leader Julie Butcher, her son chased protesters with a golf club. "I did secretly think it an appropriate response," Butcher wrote in an e-mail to SEIU members.
In person, Ferdin is tiny and attractive, with long reddish-brown hair and a good supply of jokes. Without her bullhorn, she comes across as downright adorable. Okay, she likes to send out copies of that terrible video of shelter animals being slaughtered at city shelter "death camps" (also available for viewing, if you can stand it, at Stopthekilling.net), but people who know her get it. If you watch the tape, she believes she can win you over to her side.
At a protest, she handed out copies to KTLA, Fox, and channel 7's Eyewitness News, and ADLLA also sent copies to the entire city council with a letter that said, ´´ "By watching this footage you will learn why the public is so outraged at the holocaust - the mass killings ... in our six city animal Death Camps."
Unfortunately, a few council members didn't appreciate the gesture. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that the LAPD "has been collecting the packages."
But it must be reiterated at least once each article that the ADLLA is not the Animal Liberation Front. It doesn't smoke-bomb or send "suspicious devices." And if the city council - or even the mayor's staff - is still under the impression that targeting ADLLA will effectively separate it from the moderates, no way it's happening now. The department's a mess, ADLLA says, and a whole lot of moderates now want Stuckey out.
The list of grievances is long and damning: Well-documented stories tell of children at a shelter exhibit given poisonous snakes to play with, allegations that rabbits were being adopted out of the shelters by bogus rescue groups to be illegally fed to snakes, and outright violations of the Hayden Bill, arguably the country's most progressive legislation to save animals' lives in California shelters. There's the vet who was allegedly fired for keeping more animals alive. One West Valley facility called Angel Puss and Pooch had been under complaint for animal mistreatment and disease for years without any action by Animal Services.
"I called Guerdon Stuckey so many times," says rescuer Rosa Bertozzi, who tape-recorded a complaint about Angel Puss and Pooch, which included charges of storing dead cats in a freezer. "He never called back."
According to Bertozzi, the former owner of Angel Puss and Pooch was prohibited from returning to the store premises because of criminal incidents in 2003. Court documents support this. The place has also been the subject of an action alert by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for years. Bertozzi was finally able to get the media and LAPD out there last summer, but they were challenged to bring a warrant and never did. After LAAS workers finally showed (they don't need warrants), one of the facility's workers allegedly grabbed the 18 dead cats, stuck them in the trunk of her car, and drove away.
Furious, activist Michael Bell called Stuckey. Bell is on the board of political action committee Animal Legislative Action Network (ALAN) and leader of Citizens for a Humane Los Angeles. He helped spearhead the Hayden Bill. Originally a Stuckey supporter, Bell attended a commission meeting and concluded: "We have a general manager who doesn't know what the law is.
"The first time I met Stuckey I told him about animal abuse at the shelters," Bell continued. "He said, 'I will not put up with abuse. I am a disciplinarian.'"
But later, Bell said, "You know what his discipline was? He fired Dr. Laura Cochrane."
"I have no idea why I was fired," Cochrane insisted. I was hired as the - quote - 'catalyst for change.' The department knew my philosophy is trying to save lives."
Which is exactly what she did. Hired last summer, Cochrane performed surgeries and introduced improved vaccine protocols that resulted in more animals staying alive in the shelters. "The staff wasn't used to this," she said. "It created a problem for them of an increased workload. So, I cleaned cages at an average of every two hours, gave the animals water, because it wasn't getting done. And then I got complaints because there were too many animals around."
A scant three months later, on October 11, head veterinarian Dr. Cassandra Smith fired Cochrane. Stuckey signed the letter.
On October 29, the mayor invited Cochrane and others from the humane community to voice their issues. According to Deputy Mayor Jimmy Blackman, "The mayor listened to Dr. Cochrane's assessment of her experiences in the department ... . He asked if she would ever be interested in returning ... and promised to look into the circumstances behind her removal."
"It would be hard for me to go back to a place where I'm looked at as the enemy," Cochrane said, "and a situation where the status quo has been substandard care of animals and under-performing employees."
As CityBeat reported on October 27, Stuckey bungled the city's spay/neuter contract with the Sam Simon Foundation and in doing so lost $1.1 million in spaymobile services for the poor and homeless. Since that article, CityBeat has learned there was at least one other contractor's bid with the city. The documents that were provided by the five evaluators might have shed some light on whether there was a better bid that Stuckey turned down. But, according to an e-mail from Erika Brunson, "All paperwork from the evaluators seems to be missing ... and [the] general manager cannot recall anything."
"The first time I met Stuckey was when he had just moved to town," recalled Mary Cummins. "We were at a party thrown for the Humane Society by Commissioner Kathy Riordan. I said, 'If you could turn around L.A. Animal Services, it would be a wonderful thing for you and the city.' He said, 'That's my goal: Turn this thing around and be the turnaround king.'"
Stuckey originally agreed to an interview for this story, and was provided with a list of topics to be discussed. But by the time of the scheduled conversation two days later, his office said Stuckey was unavailable - indefinitely.
"I am not now, nor have I ever been ..."
"I certainly don't fit the profile of an activist or a radical," Brunson wrote Villaraigosa upon learning that she was being fired from the commission. "I don't belong to the Animal Defense League (ADL) (and neither do any of your other Animal Services commissioners). In fact, I only met one member of that organization once. I don't even belong to any local animal or rescue groups."
Brunson is a respected philanthropist, businesswoman, and socialite. She belongs to many charitable organizations and was appointed to the commission by Hahn. She founded the Coalition for Pets and Public Safety to support the city's spay/neuter ordinance (passed in 2000), for which Villaraigosa actively advocated, and convinced Debbie Reynolds, Brooke Shields, and DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, to name a few, to join the coalition. She and her husband have a net worth of more than $60 million.
"I'm the first domino to fall," Brunson said in an interview the morning after she was fired, indicating she believes two more commissioners will be ousted. "Of course, the mayor has every right to appoint whomever he wants. But they are trying to neutralize the commission. The office says we are all advocates. We advocate too much."
But the mayor's office denied this. "This commission is not unlike the other city commissions," said administration spokesperson Erickson. "The mayor wants to ... move the department forward. He did that with the police commission, the airport commission. She was replaced with a new commissioner, as we've done with several departments."
Also, according to Deputy Mayor Blackman, it was "not our intention to make any additional changes to the commission at this time."
"She alone called Stuckey on his 'theory of change' bull," Cummins said of Brunson. "Sometimes you need to call people on their bull excuses and responses, or nothing will ever change."
ADLLA issued a statement about Brunson's dismissal that reads in part: "There is no need to lament the recent firing of Commissioner Erika Brunson."
Asked if she planned to attend an ADLLA event, one volunteer e-mailed me: "I have never and will never go to an ADL ... event. Anyone who goes will instantly be labeled a 'terrorist.' ... The city will not return phone calls ... I can't afford to be labeled a 'terrorist' or I won't be able to save animals."
Hahn had called the ADLLA "terrorists" after the group picketed in front of his house. But this has led to a long-standing misconception among animal folks that ADLLA is in some way of interest to the FBI. CityBeat checked. It's not.
But Blackman insists Villaraigosa has absolutely no agenda to paint anyone with a broad brush. "Mayor Villaraigosa has never, ever confused the humane/rescue community that has a genuine desire for departmental reform and excellence with the small number of individuals that have unfortunately decided to threaten city employees and commit criminal acts. The mayor believes in an individual's right to peacefully protest, and he will continue to work with all who have a genuine interest in achieving excellence in this department."
Villaraigosa even had this to say about ADLLA: "I believe that ADL is a passionate group in this community who has every right to voice their beliefs."
Fact is, regarding cats and dogs in this city, ADLLA's campaign has been downright mainstream: It supports a mandatory spay/neuter law, leash laws, strict enforcement of animal-cruelty laws, accountability at the LAAS, and stopping the massive number of animals killed each year. So far, nobody in ADLLA has asked the mayor to stop wearing leather shoes.
State of the Union
On October 10, Service Employees International Union Local 347 President Julie Butcher sent out a flyer to members - some of whom are city animal-shelter workers - that it wasn't just Stuckey who was attacked. Her car was set on fire in July.
In the flyer, Butcher not only loosely suggests that her car was attacked by ADLLA, thus erroneously equating it with ALF, but also says "I was scared," and offers a chilling insight into ideas that were tossed around at a recent "brainstorming" session, which includes that shelter workers can "apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon."
I had interviewed Butcher two months ago, and at that time she said she wasn't convinced the attack was linked to animal issues - ALF did not take responsibility for the attack - and she wasn't afraid. The animal folks, she said, "Are more barks than bites. I think they are just having fun with my name."
Besides, her car was set on fire in July, when 1.4 million SEIU members (including her 13,612) were pulling out of the AFL-CIO, and Butcher didn't support the move. During the election, there were several Associated Press reports of union protesters storming their way into Bush-Cheney headquarters and intimidating volunteers. The AFL-CIO took credit on its website for the protests.
Butcher didn't respond to interview requests for this story.
They're big, noisy, and won't go away
Depending on your perspective, L.A. activists are the most committed angels or the biggest bunch of lunatics on earth, regardless if it's the antiwar street-corner protesters or the "Don't smoke on our beach" bunch. "L.A. is PETA's pick of the crop," says Jen McClure, media liaison for PETA. "After all, what other city would be into bean curd so much that they'd throw a tofu festival that thousands of people attended? As far as we're concerned, L.A. stands for 'Loves Animals.'"
It's hard to imagine how Stuckey can keep ignoring them. They've been out there asking for the same thing since Hahn was mayor. One of Hahn's dumbest hours was when he called the ADLLA "terrorists" and had five members arrested for picketing him. All were later acquitted. "In my closing arguments, I was able to talk about killing animals," Ferdin said happily. "We were able to get that message out to the jurors."
Stuckey's attitude seems even worse than Hahn's. Eyewitnesses at commission meetings describe Stuckey as becoming increasingly "arrogant" and dismissive of the commissioners. This can be gleaned by just reading his answers in the commission minutes. "I don't know" shows up as his most common response, as when he told Commissioner Debbie Knaan he didn't know the hours his shelters stayed open.
"The mayor can fire me today at 5 p.m. if he wants," he said at another meeting. "I don't want to give him a reason ... . It takes a long time to fire someone in civil service. They can be brought back by appeal. The theory of change says it takes five to seven years to make change."
This one has been circulated so often in activist e-mails that many of them can now recite it verbatim. When asked why he could not reprimand bad behavior by shelter employees, Stuckey answered: "They don't respect my job status."
The bigger question is: How can Stuckey even stand to stay? It wasn't this way at his other jobs. Back when he worked with neighborhoods instead of animals, Stuckey started a program of Good Neighbor Awards. When people had to be relocated from moldy apartments, Stuckey was the one who helped them. When floods came, he'd be out there in his boots. When it was announced in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2001 that Stuckey was leaving his position as director of neighborhood services to take a similar job in Rockville, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory said before the city council that Stuckey was "a joy to work with."
At a meeting of LAAS volunteers in early October, Stuckey observed that L.A. is the "most political" city he ever knew. "It's insane."
It's true. He is subject to hyper-scrutiny. These are not just activists; these are consumers trying to hold their government accountable, in the way we've been taught to do. He can spin it all he wants. They're not going to disappear.
So he spins some more: In the Daily News on October 21: "I think the department has come a long way and we are euthanizing 46 percent fewer animals than when I came on."
Unfortunately, even his own department's records don't support the claim. In a 25-page LAAS report obtained by CityBeat, statistics for the year prior to Stuckey coming on board (2003-04) cite 29,560 animals euthanized. On Stuckey's "improved" watch, 24,932 animals were euthanized - far from that 46 percent decrease Stuckey touted. He now claims the Daily News misquoted him.
Singita founding board member Chris Laib shrugged and echoed his boss Hackett's belief that Stuckey's business sense will eventually carry the day. "There is a vocal minority of very shrill folks who are attacking him," Laib argued. "They are just leftovers from the '60s who like to attack government."
"From what I understand ... volunteers have rallied around him, just because his leadership is so good," Hackett informed. "The shelter workers are working longer hours without pay because they believe in what he's trying to accomplish." CityBeat was unable to verify whether or not union shelter workers are putting in overtime without pay.
Seems Like Old Times
On Saturday, October 29, the mayor met with members of the humane community. Also invited was ex-Mayor Richard Riordan, whom Blackman says was invited to speak with Villaraigosa about Animal Services - dismissing the suggestion that he attended because his daughter Kathleen Riordan might be nervous about changes to the commission. "He did not have to," says Blackman. "Mayor Villaraigosa thinks that Kathy Riordan is doing an excellent job ... and has no plans to replace her."
The mayor appeared tired, to Bell. "Just worn out. And he admitted we were low on his radar," he said. "But he listened to everything ... . He asked Laura [Cochrane] why she was fired, and he was furious. He turned to Blackman and said, 'I want an investigation.'"
Citing "department policy," Blackman would not confirm or deny the existence of any ongoing investigation.
The members of the humane community left with unresolved issues, but they left happy. They were happy for three days. Then, on November 2, the mayor appeared with Stuckey in the L.A. Times, under the headline: "Villaraigosa Backs Animal Services Chief... ."
Cummins was in the middle of preparing an e-mail about how well that Saturday meeting had gone when she read the Times piece. She stopped in midair.
Of course, there are other campaign promises out there, too. "People call me every day about the elephants," says veterinarian Dr. Bob Goldman. "Every day, someone else asks: When is the mayor going to free the elephants?"
Protest! Smoke bombs! Euthanasia videos! Resistance to L.A. Animal Services chief Guerdon Stuckey ha
By Annette Stark
A year is a long time in city politics, where whole careers can flash by in only a couple of years. So, it's hard to figure why Guerdon Stuckey is still stuck in a tight spot with the humane community. Even the people who felt he could turn things around when he first took the job are now shaking their heads. If anything, his conflict with animal advocates has gotten worse. A lot of animal folks who didn't originally oppose Stuckey's 2004 appointment as general manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) by former Mayor James Hahn have joined the other side. If there was ever a moment for Stuckey to win over his critics, it appears to have passed.
"I saw him the other night at the Singita event," said wildlife rescuer Mary Cummins, founder of volunteer group Animal Advocates. "He went up to the ticket table looking for a ticket. They didn't have one for him. I got a free ticket, others did, but it was a fundraiser so, of course, some had to pay. He had to pay. He then walked around, and no one spoke to him. I walked over and introduced him to Leon Seidman of Cosmic Pet Products."
Singita is a charity created to establish a feral-cat sanctuary outside the city. It's the five-year dream of late comedian Buddy Hackett and his widow Sherry, who is still a very vocal supporter of Stuckey. Seidman, a longtime friend of Hackett's, is the largest producer of catnip in the world.
Talking with Stuckey, Seidman suggested little stores at the city shelters where people could buy things for their new pets. Cummins said Stuckey shot down the idea, complaining that such a thing would be impossible. "[Stuckey] said L.A. is the most bureaucratic city he's ever seen, and people don't realize he's doing the best job he can, and it just takes forever to get things done," said Cummins.
"Before he came to L.A., I sent him an e-mail," she added. "I thought he should know what it's really like here. I sent him some news items on the activists ... . I thought: If I were his wife and was going into a hotbed of activist activity, I'd want to know.'"
One year later, a hurricane of e-mails and faxes berating Stuckey continued to pile up at LAAS. They asked why he won't meet with nationally recognized no-kill expert Nathan Winograd (who just met with the mayor last weekend). They wanted to know what happened to the spaymobile contract he apparently bungled. And they wondered why popular choices for GM had been passed over, such as powerhouse litigator Theresa Macellaro, who has served as counsel for Hahn, ex-Mayor Dick Riordan, the City of Los Angeles, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name a few.
Worse, these critics wanted to know what happened to the campaign promise of Antonio Villaraigosa himself, who insisted, "When I am mayor, [Guerdon] Stuckey will not be head of Animal Services."
Over the last few months, the mayor threw that question back to L.A.'s animal-advocacy community. As pickets at city officials' homes grew more contentious, and smoke bombs wafted through Stuckey's house, Villaraigosa felt liberated from any campaign promises. Even though the illegal smoke bombs were claimed by the underground network Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and had no connection whatsoever to legal humane-community activists, the mayor said he wasn't going to be "bullied" into firing anyone.
Instead, it became open season on activism. A commissioner was fired and said two others would be next, allegedly for being animal "advocates." A shelter doctor was fired for similar reasons, without the mayor's knowledge.
The whole of Animal Services, it seemed, was in chaos. At the heart of the disarray was a question: What is "advocacy"? How much could someone love animals and still be part of the city's animal team? Just what the hell was going on over there?
Many of these "advocates" campaigned for Villaraigosa, but he's evidently over it. The one meeting he had with Animal Defense League Los Angeles (ADLLA) on October 21 did not come off well. "The mayor agreed that he promised to fire Stuckey, but he said he 'had made a lot of promises,'" Dr. Jerry Vlasak, press officer for ADLLA, told CityBeat via e-mail. "He then stated as long as 'activists' were targeting Stuckey he would not be 'bullied' into firing him."
And the waffling goes on. When pressed by this reporter about Stuckey's status, administration spokesperson Janelle Erickson repeatedly dodged the question.: "Mayor Villaraigosa intends to uphold his pledge to reform the Department of Animal Services ... . Nothing has changed. The mayor is working hard every day to face many of the city's challenges, and reforming the department is one of those."
In late July, animal rescuer Daniel Guss, creator of the STAND Foundation (for Stop Torture Abuse & Neglect of Dogs), began e-mailing his now famous "100 Reasons to Fire Stuckey." He also purchased the websites Antonio2008.com, Antonio2012.com, and mayormentiroso.com - which means "lying mayor" in Spanish. When and if Villaraigosa does fire Stuckey, Guss might turn these domain names over to the Democratic National Committee.
ADLLA's website now features a photo of Villaraigosa, its onetime hero, with the caption "One Thousand Lies."
"One, two, three, what are we fighting for?"
On the evening of September 16, a small smoke device was set off at the Bunker Hill apartment building where Stuckey lives with his wife. Neither was home at the time. The LAPD confirmed the incident the following week and said it had placed more protective forces around the GM. The militant ALF claimed responsibility in a communiqué.
The attack was condemned in a subsequent LAAS meeting, but, according to former LAAS commissioner Erika Brunson, "The damage was done. Everything changed, and he [Stuckey] became the victim. They [the administration] are now rallying their forces to protect him."
Stuckey told CityBeat several days later that he "isn't afraid," but his friend and supporter Sherry Hackett said that doesn't mean he can work with the activists. "If you're a good businessperson, you bring people together," she said. "Guerdon's done this, and now he has a battle ... . I don't know if these people can be reasoned with. They're zealots."
From the beginning, Hackett said, Stuckey reached out to help. "I can collect 20 people who are sound citizens in the community who can say this man is bright, articulate," she said. "So he doesn't know about animals?
"We have our feral-cat program that we submitted five years ago, and the previous manager never supported it," she continued. "Guerdon supported it. It's very important to achieve the [no-kill] objective that ex-Mayor Hahn expressed. But for him to have gotten all this done in two years - it's lunacy for them to say that, and they've alienated people like us."
Of course, you can't be ADLLA founder Pam Ferdin if you're worried about alienating people. She has a bullhorn, picket signs that say "puppy killer," and a high tolerance for legally disturbing the bureaucratic peace.
The ADLLA people are very thick-skinned: At a demonstration on the block of LAAS Commander David Diliberto, neighbors called Ferdin "cunt" and "bitch" and squirted the protesters with garden hoses. At the home of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 347 leader Julie Butcher, her son chased protesters with a golf club. "I did secretly think it an appropriate response," Butcher wrote in an e-mail to SEIU members.
In person, Ferdin is tiny and attractive, with long reddish-brown hair and a good supply of jokes. Without her bullhorn, she comes across as downright adorable. Okay, she likes to send out copies of that terrible video of shelter animals being slaughtered at city shelter "death camps" (also available for viewing, if you can stand it, at Stopthekilling.net), but people who know her get it. If you watch the tape, she believes she can win you over to her side.
At a protest, she handed out copies to KTLA, Fox, and channel 7's Eyewitness News, and ADLLA also sent copies to the entire city council with a letter that said, ´´ "By watching this footage you will learn why the public is so outraged at the holocaust - the mass killings ... in our six city animal Death Camps."
Unfortunately, a few council members didn't appreciate the gesture. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that the LAPD "has been collecting the packages."
But it must be reiterated at least once each article that the ADLLA is not the Animal Liberation Front. It doesn't smoke-bomb or send "suspicious devices." And if the city council - or even the mayor's staff - is still under the impression that targeting ADLLA will effectively separate it from the moderates, no way it's happening now. The department's a mess, ADLLA says, and a whole lot of moderates now want Stuckey out.
The list of grievances is long and damning: Well-documented stories tell of children at a shelter exhibit given poisonous snakes to play with, allegations that rabbits were being adopted out of the shelters by bogus rescue groups to be illegally fed to snakes, and outright violations of the Hayden Bill, arguably the country's most progressive legislation to save animals' lives in California shelters. There's the vet who was allegedly fired for keeping more animals alive. One West Valley facility called Angel Puss and Pooch had been under complaint for animal mistreatment and disease for years without any action by Animal Services.
"I called Guerdon Stuckey so many times," says rescuer Rosa Bertozzi, who tape-recorded a complaint about Angel Puss and Pooch, which included charges of storing dead cats in a freezer. "He never called back."
According to Bertozzi, the former owner of Angel Puss and Pooch was prohibited from returning to the store premises because of criminal incidents in 2003. Court documents support this. The place has also been the subject of an action alert by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for years. Bertozzi was finally able to get the media and LAPD out there last summer, but they were challenged to bring a warrant and never did. After LAAS workers finally showed (they don't need warrants), one of the facility's workers allegedly grabbed the 18 dead cats, stuck them in the trunk of her car, and drove away.
Furious, activist Michael Bell called Stuckey. Bell is on the board of political action committee Animal Legislative Action Network (ALAN) and leader of Citizens for a Humane Los Angeles. He helped spearhead the Hayden Bill. Originally a Stuckey supporter, Bell attended a commission meeting and concluded: "We have a general manager who doesn't know what the law is.
"The first time I met Stuckey I told him about animal abuse at the shelters," Bell continued. "He said, 'I will not put up with abuse. I am a disciplinarian.'"
But later, Bell said, "You know what his discipline was? He fired Dr. Laura Cochrane."
"I have no idea why I was fired," Cochrane insisted. I was hired as the - quote - 'catalyst for change.' The department knew my philosophy is trying to save lives."
Which is exactly what she did. Hired last summer, Cochrane performed surgeries and introduced improved vaccine protocols that resulted in more animals staying alive in the shelters. "The staff wasn't used to this," she said. "It created a problem for them of an increased workload. So, I cleaned cages at an average of every two hours, gave the animals water, because it wasn't getting done. And then I got complaints because there were too many animals around."
A scant three months later, on October 11, head veterinarian Dr. Cassandra Smith fired Cochrane. Stuckey signed the letter.
On October 29, the mayor invited Cochrane and others from the humane community to voice their issues. According to Deputy Mayor Jimmy Blackman, "The mayor listened to Dr. Cochrane's assessment of her experiences in the department ... . He asked if she would ever be interested in returning ... and promised to look into the circumstances behind her removal."
"It would be hard for me to go back to a place where I'm looked at as the enemy," Cochrane said, "and a situation where the status quo has been substandard care of animals and under-performing employees."
As CityBeat reported on October 27, Stuckey bungled the city's spay/neuter contract with the Sam Simon Foundation and in doing so lost $1.1 million in spaymobile services for the poor and homeless. Since that article, CityBeat has learned there was at least one other contractor's bid with the city. The documents that were provided by the five evaluators might have shed some light on whether there was a better bid that Stuckey turned down. But, according to an e-mail from Erika Brunson, "All paperwork from the evaluators seems to be missing ... and [the] general manager cannot recall anything."
"The first time I met Stuckey was when he had just moved to town," recalled Mary Cummins. "We were at a party thrown for the Humane Society by Commissioner Kathy Riordan. I said, 'If you could turn around L.A. Animal Services, it would be a wonderful thing for you and the city.' He said, 'That's my goal: Turn this thing around and be the turnaround king.'"
Stuckey originally agreed to an interview for this story, and was provided with a list of topics to be discussed. But by the time of the scheduled conversation two days later, his office said Stuckey was unavailable - indefinitely.
"I am not now, nor have I ever been ..."
"I certainly don't fit the profile of an activist or a radical," Brunson wrote Villaraigosa upon learning that she was being fired from the commission. "I don't belong to the Animal Defense League (ADL) (and neither do any of your other Animal Services commissioners). In fact, I only met one member of that organization once. I don't even belong to any local animal or rescue groups."
Brunson is a respected philanthropist, businesswoman, and socialite. She belongs to many charitable organizations and was appointed to the commission by Hahn. She founded the Coalition for Pets and Public Safety to support the city's spay/neuter ordinance (passed in 2000), for which Villaraigosa actively advocated, and convinced Debbie Reynolds, Brooke Shields, and DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, to name a few, to join the coalition. She and her husband have a net worth of more than $60 million.
"I'm the first domino to fall," Brunson said in an interview the morning after she was fired, indicating she believes two more commissioners will be ousted. "Of course, the mayor has every right to appoint whomever he wants. But they are trying to neutralize the commission. The office says we are all advocates. We advocate too much."
But the mayor's office denied this. "This commission is not unlike the other city commissions," said administration spokesperson Erickson. "The mayor wants to ... move the department forward. He did that with the police commission, the airport commission. She was replaced with a new commissioner, as we've done with several departments."
Also, according to Deputy Mayor Blackman, it was "not our intention to make any additional changes to the commission at this time."
"She alone called Stuckey on his 'theory of change' bull," Cummins said of Brunson. "Sometimes you need to call people on their bull excuses and responses, or nothing will ever change."
ADLLA issued a statement about Brunson's dismissal that reads in part: "There is no need to lament the recent firing of Commissioner Erika Brunson."
Asked if she planned to attend an ADLLA event, one volunteer e-mailed me: "I have never and will never go to an ADL ... event. Anyone who goes will instantly be labeled a 'terrorist.' ... The city will not return phone calls ... I can't afford to be labeled a 'terrorist' or I won't be able to save animals."
Hahn had called the ADLLA "terrorists" after the group picketed in front of his house. But this has led to a long-standing misconception among animal folks that ADLLA is in some way of interest to the FBI. CityBeat checked. It's not.
But Blackman insists Villaraigosa has absolutely no agenda to paint anyone with a broad brush. "Mayor Villaraigosa has never, ever confused the humane/rescue community that has a genuine desire for departmental reform and excellence with the small number of individuals that have unfortunately decided to threaten city employees and commit criminal acts. The mayor believes in an individual's right to peacefully protest, and he will continue to work with all who have a genuine interest in achieving excellence in this department."
Villaraigosa even had this to say about ADLLA: "I believe that ADL is a passionate group in this community who has every right to voice their beliefs."
Fact is, regarding cats and dogs in this city, ADLLA's campaign has been downright mainstream: It supports a mandatory spay/neuter law, leash laws, strict enforcement of animal-cruelty laws, accountability at the LAAS, and stopping the massive number of animals killed each year. So far, nobody in ADLLA has asked the mayor to stop wearing leather shoes.
State of the Union
On October 10, Service Employees International Union Local 347 President Julie Butcher sent out a flyer to members - some of whom are city animal-shelter workers - that it wasn't just Stuckey who was attacked. Her car was set on fire in July.
In the flyer, Butcher not only loosely suggests that her car was attacked by ADLLA, thus erroneously equating it with ALF, but also says "I was scared," and offers a chilling insight into ideas that were tossed around at a recent "brainstorming" session, which includes that shelter workers can "apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon."
I had interviewed Butcher two months ago, and at that time she said she wasn't convinced the attack was linked to animal issues - ALF did not take responsibility for the attack - and she wasn't afraid. The animal folks, she said, "Are more barks than bites. I think they are just having fun with my name."
Besides, her car was set on fire in July, when 1.4 million SEIU members (including her 13,612) were pulling out of the AFL-CIO, and Butcher didn't support the move. During the election, there were several Associated Press reports of union protesters storming their way into Bush-Cheney headquarters and intimidating volunteers. The AFL-CIO took credit on its website for the protests.
Butcher didn't respond to interview requests for this story.
They're big, noisy, and won't go away
Depending on your perspective, L.A. activists are the most committed angels or the biggest bunch of lunatics on earth, regardless if it's the antiwar street-corner protesters or the "Don't smoke on our beach" bunch. "L.A. is PETA's pick of the crop," says Jen McClure, media liaison for PETA. "After all, what other city would be into bean curd so much that they'd throw a tofu festival that thousands of people attended? As far as we're concerned, L.A. stands for 'Loves Animals.'"
It's hard to imagine how Stuckey can keep ignoring them. They've been out there asking for the same thing since Hahn was mayor. One of Hahn's dumbest hours was when he called the ADLLA "terrorists" and had five members arrested for picketing him. All were later acquitted. "In my closing arguments, I was able to talk about killing animals," Ferdin said happily. "We were able to get that message out to the jurors."
Stuckey's attitude seems even worse than Hahn's. Eyewitnesses at commission meetings describe Stuckey as becoming increasingly "arrogant" and dismissive of the commissioners. This can be gleaned by just reading his answers in the commission minutes. "I don't know" shows up as his most common response, as when he told Commissioner Debbie Knaan he didn't know the hours his shelters stayed open.
"The mayor can fire me today at 5 p.m. if he wants," he said at another meeting. "I don't want to give him a reason ... . It takes a long time to fire someone in civil service. They can be brought back by appeal. The theory of change says it takes five to seven years to make change."
This one has been circulated so often in activist e-mails that many of them can now recite it verbatim. When asked why he could not reprimand bad behavior by shelter employees, Stuckey answered: "They don't respect my job status."
The bigger question is: How can Stuckey even stand to stay? It wasn't this way at his other jobs. Back when he worked with neighborhoods instead of animals, Stuckey started a program of Good Neighbor Awards. When people had to be relocated from moldy apartments, Stuckey was the one who helped them. When floods came, he'd be out there in his boots. When it was announced in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2001 that Stuckey was leaving his position as director of neighborhood services to take a similar job in Rockville, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory said before the city council that Stuckey was "a joy to work with."
At a meeting of LAAS volunteers in early October, Stuckey observed that L.A. is the "most political" city he ever knew. "It's insane."
It's true. He is subject to hyper-scrutiny. These are not just activists; these are consumers trying to hold their government accountable, in the way we've been taught to do. He can spin it all he wants. They're not going to disappear.
So he spins some more: In the Daily News on October 21: "I think the department has come a long way and we are euthanizing 46 percent fewer animals than when I came on."
Unfortunately, even his own department's records don't support the claim. In a 25-page LAAS report obtained by CityBeat, statistics for the year prior to Stuckey coming on board (2003-04) cite 29,560 animals euthanized. On Stuckey's "improved" watch, 24,932 animals were euthanized - far from that 46 percent decrease Stuckey touted. He now claims the Daily News misquoted him.
Singita founding board member Chris Laib shrugged and echoed his boss Hackett's belief that Stuckey's business sense will eventually carry the day. "There is a vocal minority of very shrill folks who are attacking him," Laib argued. "They are just leftovers from the '60s who like to attack government."
"From what I understand ... volunteers have rallied around him, just because his leadership is so good," Hackett informed. "The shelter workers are working longer hours without pay because they believe in what he's trying to accomplish." CityBeat was unable to verify whether or not union shelter workers are putting in overtime without pay.
Seems Like Old Times
On Saturday, October 29, the mayor met with members of the humane community. Also invited was ex-Mayor Richard Riordan, whom Blackman says was invited to speak with Villaraigosa about Animal Services - dismissing the suggestion that he attended because his daughter Kathleen Riordan might be nervous about changes to the commission. "He did not have to," says Blackman. "Mayor Villaraigosa thinks that Kathy Riordan is doing an excellent job ... and has no plans to replace her."
The mayor appeared tired, to Bell. "Just worn out. And he admitted we were low on his radar," he said. "But he listened to everything ... . He asked Laura [Cochrane] why she was fired, and he was furious. He turned to Blackman and said, 'I want an investigation.'"
Citing "department policy," Blackman would not confirm or deny the existence of any ongoing investigation.
The members of the humane community left with unresolved issues, but they left happy. They were happy for three days. Then, on November 2, the mayor appeared with Stuckey in the L.A. Times, under the headline: "Villaraigosa Backs Animal Services Chief... ."
Cummins was in the middle of preparing an e-mail about how well that Saturday meeting had gone when she read the Times piece. She stopped in midair.
Of course, there are other campaign promises out there, too. "People call me every day about the elephants," says veterinarian Dr. Bob Goldman. "Every day, someone else asks: When is the mayor going to free the elephants?"
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