Los Angeles Mayor Continues Killing of City’s Companion Animals

For Immediate Release
November 26, 2007

Los Angeles Mayor Continues Killing of City’s Companion Animals
Activists Send Message to Quit, Loud and Clear

Los Angeles- Since 2003 activists have focused on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who has repeatedly failed to hire experts to evaluate the mismanaged and corrupt Los Angeles Animal Services and implement proven no kill policies, programs and protocols proven to stop the killing of thousands of healthy, treatable animals in municipal shelters.

In an anonymous communique received by the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, underground activists have taken the struggle up a notch. The communique reads in part:

“On the night of monday november the 12 we hit the house of deborah villar. If the name sounds familiar its cause shes the sister of the mayor of los angeles, california. We spent the last couple months doing some recon at the department of los angeles animal shelters. We even saw places like the rooms they bump off animals. What haunted us most were the wide eyes, wide eyes with the most terrified expressions we ever saw. The stk web site has a video that doesn’t show the half of it.”

Two previous general managers of the Department of Animal Services have either retired or have been removed, only to see Mayor Villaraigosa appoint Ed Boks, a known fraud who was asked to leave as General Manager in Arizona; at his most recent position in NYC, the animal commission refused to renew his contract as executive director. Instead of Villaraigosa appointing someone to consult and evaluate the LAAS and make the necessary changes to save tens of thousands of lives each year, he instead appointed Ed Boks, allegedly because of a large campaign contribution promised by then-friend of Boks, Gary Michaelson.

Ed Boks does not even possess the basic requirements that General Managers of LA City Departments have historically been required to have, one being a college degree. Villaraigosa intentionally by-passed the city’s personel office and the normal channels most candidates pass through; Boks is currently earning over one hundred sixty five thousand dollars per year of tax payer money to continue his history of ineptitude and mismanagement in our six city animal shelters.

Lindy Greene, press officer with NAALPO states “Everyone knows that Ed Boks isn’t the right man for the job of General Manager of LAAS and to know that Boks is responsible for the continued needless slaughter of cats, dogs, puppies, kittens and other shelter animals every year because Villaraigosa and his staff wanted money from a wealthy donor. This is a disgusting turn of events and absolutely unacceptable. The humane community knows all to well that mayoral staffers such as Jimmy Blackman and Jim Bickhart encouraged the Mayor to hire an incompetent like Ed Boks without even researching the abysmal history he’s had at the two previous shelters he’s overseen.”