ANGUISH OVER ANIMALS CITY POLICY 'MANAGEMENT BY DEATH,' CRITICS SAY.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

NORTH HOLLYWOOD - For days, a starving Doberman puppy scurried through traffic, trapped between two Los Angeles freeways.

Residents couldn't catch him. Dogcatchers at East Valley and North Central animal shelters ignored pleas to save him and wouldn't lend traps to apprehend him, animal rescuers say.

The story - and others like it - prompted some animal rescuers to step up their fight. Others like Bobby Dorafshar have uprooted New Leash on Life from Woodland Hills to Newhall.

``I couldn't take it anymore,'' said Dorafshar, founder of the city mobile pet adoption program. ``Every time we have an issue with the department, nothing is done.''

In October, Dorafshar and dozens of Los Angeles rescue groups met to protest city pound policies and practices they claim are unfair to animals and biased against those who try to rescue them.

At the top of their long list of grievances against the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services is a policy that kills thousands of cats and dogs in a ``management by death,'' critics say.

They accuse the department of mismanaging its spay-and-neuter program at the expense of vouchers for the needy, of failing to collect millions in uncollected dog license fees, of chasing away volunteers from the six public shelters, and of failing to establish effective community outreach programs

Rescuers at a recent ``no kill'' animal vigil say they were harassed by dogcatchers ordered by management to cite owners of unleashed dogs. Officials deny the charge.

The chief culprit, they claim, is Animal Services General Manager Jerry Greenwalt, a former city finance officer who replaced Dan Knapp, a controversial department head fired by the mayor a year ago this week. While Knapp was sympathetic with the ``humane community'' - and some say controlled by it - Greenwalt is old school, they claim.

``This department is in a reactionary mode, this department is going backward,'' said Michael Bell, head of the Encino-based Citizens for a Humane Los Angeles. ``The biggest problem is they have cut off all contact with the humane community - their greatest natural resource - and have been caught destroying animals before their adoptable date.''

On Oct. 7, Bell joined more than 100 rescuers to lash out at the troubled agency during a special three-hour meeting of the Board of Animal Services Commissioners in North Hollywood.

``This department is a disgrace from the top down,'' Lois Newman of the Cat and Dog Rescue Association of Hollywood, told the board. ``Remember, the fish begins to stink from the head.''

Greenwalt says he's puzzled by the ruckus and that such claims are fallacious.

Last week, he toured the East Valley Animal Shelter in North Hollywood with a mind toward reducing animal deaths.

In the past four years, he said, euthanasia rates have dropped 40 percent while adoptions have increased 44 percent.

``I'm an animal person,'' he said. ``I have three adopted pets, two diabetic cats ... and a German shepherd rescue. I have great people working in this department. There's no one on this staff who likes to see animals put down.''

In fiscal year 1999-2000, the city impounded 74,000 dogs and cats, placed 13,000 for adoption and killed 53,000.

During the same period this year, Greenwalt said, the city impounded 67,000 animals, found homes for 18,000 and euthanized 37,000. The number of deaths fell as much as 5,000 because of a new policy to refuse to kill pets at the request of their owners.

Greenwalt launched the department's first Web site to market available pets, with 258,000 hits last month.

Animal Services has sterilized 100,000 animals at city cost. It also launched a Spaymobile program to treat 5,000 animals a year at no charge to needy owners - a move that has incensed rescue groups who say $500,000 to fund the program has come at the expense of spay-neuter vouchers.

``There are days like that (commission meeting) night when I say, Why am I doing this?,'' Greenwalt said. ``But then there are days that I come to the shelter and wish I could take all of the animals home.''

Animal Services commissioners say the system is broken.

They blame both the department and a highly emotional rescue community with an ``aura of complaint.'' They blame disinterest from the Mayor's Office, an unworkable $13.8 million budget and a department unaccountable to the commission it serves. They blame Greenwalt for not answering commission requests for pound-deaths data. And they blame the public for a pet population run amok.

``It's a big beast that's out of control,'' said Paul Jolly, president of the commission. ``They're hamstrung by civil servants who may or may not care about animals ... they're hamstrung by a budget nobody really wants to give much money to.

``Plus, animal people are crazy.''

Kathy Riordan, another commissioner, had another take: ``Sometimes from a commissioner's standpoint, I feel we should outlaw euthanasia ... a whole way of life needs to change.''

This year, the animal services department will embark on a $154 million shelter program funded by Proposition F that will enlarge current shelters and build others in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles.

Shelter critics, including commissioners, say the department neither has the budget to man them nor the will to adopt out the available cats and dogs whose numbers have doubled because of the new shelter's capacity.

``It just hurts to live in a city like this, to lay in bed at night and know that there are dogs and cats in our city shelters who are going to be killed tomorrow who are perfectly adoptable and could use good homes,'' said Melya Kaplan, executive director of Venice Animal Allies.

The solution, said Sheryl Greene, a Woodland Hills rescuer and attorney, is to make pet owners accountable for offspring, to make city shelters work harder to educate the public and to adopt unwanted dogs and cats and allow an estimated 100 city rescue groups to find them good homes.

``I don't think the problem is insurmountable,'' she said. ``You have to have a humane outlook, not a pro-numbers outlook. You have to ask, how many animals can we adopt out of the shelter today?''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) New Leash on Life founder Bobby Dorafshar spends time at his Woodland Hills home with his dogs Edith, Shelby and Mable.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

(2 -- color) Jerry Greenwalt, general manager of the L.A. Bureau of Animal Services, visits the East Valley Animal Shelter.

(3) Department of Animal Services General Manager Jerry Greenwalt interacts with a kitten at the East Valley Animal shelter. The bureau has come under attack from animal rescue groups recently.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer