sue- one of the big problems is that the NYCACC has been systematically removing qualified rescues from their list of approved rescues that can 'pull'(take for rescue) from the shelter. there is a designated coordinator (the program is called safety net- ha!) to facilitate the removal of animals from the cacc to no-kill rescues, but she fails to respond to emails and calls, even from people desperate to take particular animals.

i know of one rescuer who has completely given up on dealing with the shelter because they won't return her calls until the animals are dead. i know of another who used to take dozens of animals every month, vet and foster them at her own expense, and take them to adoption events in prosperous, pet-friendly neighborhoods until they had homes, who was banned from pulling from the shelter (she had an argument with the wrong person). i have heard through the grapevine about several more groups that have been banned recently.

john l.- there is a group called the NYC sunlight coalition: they're on facebook...also a promising group called no-kill NYC.

but we all need to get in touch with our local politicians, and tell them that we care- a lot- about what's happening at the shelter.

the cacc HAS to be removed from under the aegis of the Department of Health, for starters, as they're always going to put their (the DOH's) own needs ahead of the animals'.

the city also has to commit to spending a lot more money on animal control: the per-capita cost for a city (according to experts)should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 and here in NYC it's less than $1.

free/low-cost spay-neuter vans, which dramatically reduce the number of unwanted animals, fill up within minutes of arriving at clinic days- i've seen people turned away every time i've attended one.

and sure, there may not be enough homes for everyone here in the city, but with a dedicated, organized coordinator (or three?) and easier ways of getting animals OUT of the shelter, many more could find their ways to smaller rescues in other places- places that don't have a glut of unwanted pets. (i think vermont is a net importer of shelter animals...)

what about lobbying for better laws protecting the rights of tenants to have pets? as a rescuer i've heard 'i'd love to adopt, if only my landlord would let me' about a thousand times- i have gotten calls from people the day they signed a lease with a pet-friendly landlord, saying 'i'm ready to adopt!'

and why are we allowing pet stores to sell puppies when we're killing them at the shelter? several towns have banned the sale of pets from stores in the last year...

and kathleen is absolutely right about the 'tweaked' euthanasia numbers- i personally (as in i actually knew the dogs in question before they ended up in the shelter- long stories...) know of two cases in the last year of dogs that were deemed dangerous/unadoptable and promptly put down, despite the fact that both were family pets: one happily cohabitated with other dogs and cats, and the other with several small kids.

and these dogs don't 'count' in the CACC's accounting of animals they kill...

This is terrible.

It really saddens me that these things are happening and it seems so unnecessary.

I read about Bloomberg's No Kill initiative and I really thought NYC was doing a great job of tending to the animals in this city and to now read that these things are just lies is really upsetting.

Thank you for taking them time to expose the truth. I will definitely look into joining the groups you mentioned and will help spread the word.

It is not about the egos of the top of the CACC, they treat their workers poorly, they cant speak out, but workers can leave. Fortunately the volunteers can and must speak or tell someone who can leak the info to the press, to change a bad situation for all. Sadly, the only out for the animals is death or a rescue group.

John L,

I think yours are absolutely reasonable questions. There ARE too many animals for all of them to find a home. But they should be given a shot at survival. And they aren't.

Most New Yorkers don't have any idea that the NYCACC even exists and that they pay for it. The shelter's paranoid secrecy and failure to advertise (both its fantastic companion animals available for adoption and its desperate need for help from the public) means a crucial opportunity is lost to INCREASE ADOPTION. And decrease the number of animals who are given the needle every morning. Why is the profile of the NYCACC so low? Why is it never branded? I'll bet more New Yorkers know what Best Friends is, and they're based in Utah. I see their signs on buses in downtown Manhattan and on billboards in the subway. Most people know what the North Shore Animal League is. Both organizations have a much more visible presence in NYC than the city's own high-kill shelter does. The NYCACC takes in 200 animals A DAY. Nobody is blaming them for the fact that people don't spay/neuter their animals or that they throw them away because they don't match the sofa or because they quote/unquote don't have time. Shouldn't the NYCACC be promoting themselves to people considering adoption - or fostering? Wouldn't it be ten times more effective and life saving to tell the truth about what's going on in their three intake centers?

This all seems so perverse to me. Yes, euthanasia is inevitable, but why not reduce it by increasing the profile of the place it's happening? This kind of thing never happens, regardless of how many times the NYCACC hires a new director.

This is the most incompetent way to run a company - I wouldn't care if it were a sneaker business, but so many animals die every day here because of this strategy, and we're told to shut up because the city is "on the way to No Kill" - another fiction. Utterly impossible unless you count funny, and 'moderate" dogs and pitbulls are killed and not counted as adoptable.

Did you know that the ragged Brooklyn NYCACC is more than an hour away from downtown Manhattan? And that the Manhattan (110th Street) and Brooklyn sites have animals shoved in back rooms, unseen by potential adopters and wedged in small cages where they are never seen or walked or handled? Then they're killed, without one shot at rescue. Healthy animals get sick when they walk into the dirty shelter and are then perversely killed for "illness"

Again, my problem is the extreme secrecy of the NYCACC - muzzling the invaluable volunteers who speak up about dogs sitting unwalked for days in their own waste and animals dying every morning without ever being advertised ; about totally incompetent, untrained "trainers" doing the "testing" on dogs who are then condemned to die because they looked at somebody funny or were frightened because their owner of seven years just dumped them at the shelter & they're looking at the parking lot and hoping to see the car return for them -- I could go on and on.

Daylight needs to be shed on the NYCACC so the public knows a) what fabulous animals are there for very cheap adoption fees and b) how horrible the situation continues to be and c) how hiding all the facts does nothing but result in more killing.

In my opinion.

Thank you for enlightening me and I'm definitely on your side.

Those seem like very reasonable requests.

One last question, if a person wanted to join an advocacy group here in NYC which would you suggest?

Do you know that your tax dollars are funding a set of horrifically mismanaged slautherhouses where hundreds of very adoptable dogs and cats are killed every week? Memo to Mr. Gentiles: that truth is not "misleading." The ACC remains a tragic entity. Its board of directors never visit the three locations to see what is going on there, instead believing everything they are told at board meetings. Shouldn't you have first-hand experience of the organization you're on the board of?

Poor new Julie Bank - now in the clutches of the Mayor's Alliance, a group allegedly overseeing the city's rescue groups but which generally surfaces only to threaten people who speak to the press about what is going on at the NYCACC. They also control the (tweaked) euthanasia numbers. Where is Wikileaks to release the true kill numbers for the NYCACC?

I wonder if the Maddie's Fund people know what's truly going on here in New York City, how the kill math is altered to satisfy their requirement that "no adoptable animals" are killed. Many many adoptable animals are killed every day - they're just labeled in such a way that you'd think they weren't. All it takes is a ball point pen to quietly change "No Concern" to "Moderate" and that's a dead dog who makes the euthanasia numbers look good.

For the record: 100-plus dogs and many hundreds of cats are killed every week. Most of them die unadvertised to local rescue groups or to the public. Most were very adoptable and loving pets. Most die untested by real and experienced testers. Perhaps humane visitors to Gothamist should demand a true and independent accounting - independent of the MA and Park Place - of what the lies their tax dollars are perpetuating.

Note: please adopt. Every conceivable type of dog and cat is at one of the three NYCACC intake centers. $60 or less includes spay/neuter and shots.

That's horrible, really is.

I'm totally against tax dollars being used in this manner but I'm not knowledgable enough about the situation and obviously you are so please forgive, I'm not trying to be an idiot here, but what's the solution or alternative to this? I clearly understand that what they are doing now is wrong, they are murdering these innocent animals, but if they didn't where could they put these animals? According to your numbers they would have over 400 animals a month, where could we house them? Who would feed them? I'm definitely on your side but I don't see what the solution is and it breaks my heart to know that this is going on. You're fighting a good fight and I commend you for that and I don't mean to put you on the spot I'm just really wondering what can be done to prevent these murders.

Memo to Julie Bank: Fire Richard and hire me.

They need to hire Felix!

...in a surefire way to damage their image even more.