PETA Plasters Streets With Messages Blasting Mayor Bass Over Failed Animal Shelter Policies

For Immediate Release:
March 11, 2024

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

PETA has a message for Mayor Karen Bass: Strays in L.A. are your fault. The group has plastered the streets near her residence at Getty House, around City Hall, and by the Chesterfield Square/South LA shelter where animals are reportedly being dumped when they’re turned away by the facility with messages reminding Bass—and her constituents—that countless animals are suffering because her mismanagement allows Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) to continue its disastrously failed pursuit of “no-kill” status. Its goal of attaining the meaningless “no-kill” label is resulting in severely crowded shelters turning away homeless animals in violation of state law, animals being forced to live in filthy cages, dogs being warehoused for months without walks, and residents being told to abandon cats outdoors to fend for themselves, among other atrocities.

PETA notes that shelter staff have refused to accept stray animals and instructed residents to abandon the animals on the streets where they found them. PETA and other animal advocates have begged the city to intervene, but despite mounting evidence that LAAS policies aren’t working, Bass and city officials aren’t changing them.

“LAAS has washed its hands of the crisis it helped create by refusing to enforce the city’s spay/neuter ordinance and allowing the homeless animals it turns away to flood L.A.’s streets, where they often suffer and die painfully and slowly,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “PETA is calling on Mayor Bass to actually do her job and remind city shelters of theirs: to provide shelter to all.”

The only effective way to reduce the city’s homeless-animal population is to ban breeding and enforce the city’s 2008 spay/neuter ordinance to prevent more animals from being born. But the ordinance isn’t being enforced, and animals are being turned away and left on the streets to breed even more homeless ones.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.