Barth Refuses to Respond to Request About the ACTF and LAAS

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47 days ago, I sent a Request for Public Records to Barth, Davis, Captain Aborn and Trutanich requesting information about the Task Force's and LAAS's activities regarding complaints of residents that have too many cats.


During the two weeks before I sent this request, I had received calls from three people who were visited by either LAAS or the ACTF because of complaints about too many cats. I had also talked previously with Office Ramon Muniz on the ACTF who said people with too many cats, and feral cat colonies were the ACTF's biggest problems.


See, I had thought that the ACTF was formed to stop animal abuse and cruelty, such as dog fighting, or people torturing or abusing animals, not as the principal enforcer of LA's Kennel Law, 53.50. But apparently it is a lot easier to enforce the kennel law than find cases of cruelty. It also appears that both the ACTF and the LAAS may be manufacturing complaints against certain selected targets such as Ron Mason and Marc Madow.


I might note that this sort of activity appears to have increased since Trutanich has become City Attorney.


Here are the eight questions I asked:

1. For the years 2006-June 2009, how many investigations were carried out by either the ACTF or the LAAS regarding allegations of persons having too many cats?
2. How many investigations were conducted re allegations of persons who alleged their own cats or dogs were being poisoned?
3. How many raids were conducted by either agency regarding either alleged animal neglect, abuse due to having too many cats or dogs, or simply a violation of the Kennel law, LAMC 53.50?
4. How many arrests were made of people during 2006-June 2009 for alleged animal abuse, cruelty, neglect or violation of 53.50 for having too many cats or dogs?
5. How many convictions were there regarding persons arrested who had more than three cats or dogs, and what were the charges?
6. How many animals were seized on each occasion, and how many were killed?
7. On October 4, 2006, 18 cats were seized and 14 were killed for one reason or another, such as an alleged failure of the resolution of URI. On October 11, 2007, AS killed 26 of Ron Mason’s seized cats. Therefore, just these two occasions resulted in a 58% kill rate. Is that what AS and the ACTF means by rescue, seize and kill?
8. What was the total number of investigations, arrests and convictions of the ACTF during this time?

Finally, today, October 8, 47 days after submitting the request Linda Barth responds by saying they have no records relevant to any of these questions. They have no activity logs, no log books, no log of complaints, no log of investigations, and if they do, she is not telling me where that information can be found.

This is a total screw you response that she could have prepared on day two of the request rather than day 47.

Barth's refusal to supply this information or even where it can be found appears to validate my complaint that far too much time, money and energy of both the ACTF and LAAS is spent chasing after people with more than three cats or dogs. Why? Because this is an easily enforceable law as opposed to finding real animal cruelty and abuse.

A few weeks ago Marc Madow was visited by a supervisor of LAAS. This supervisor went out of his way to distance himself from the anti-cat activities of the ACTF.

What is going on here? Has Trutanich become complicit is a law and order campaign against people with too many pets?