Los Angeles County Director of Animal Care and Control Marcia Mayeda has been elected to serve as the president of the California Animal Welfare Association (CalAnimals).
CalAnimals is the recognized California professional organization representing animal care and control agencies throughout the State. CalAnimals provides training and education, resource and information sharing, and other services to its members and the public. CalAnimals is also active in legislative matters, advising lawmakers on proposed changes to animal-related laws especially as they relate to public safety, financial impact, animal welfare, and community service. CalAnimals hosts regional and statewide training classes and academies and is the certifying agency for Certified Animal Control Officers.
Mayeda has 35 years’ experience in the animal welfare field and has led the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control (DACC) since 2001. DACC is the largest animal care and control agency in the nation, caring for more than 60,000 animals each year. DACC serves all unincorporated Los Angeles County as well as 44 cities who contract with DACC for animal services.
“I am honored to be elected as president of CalAnimals,” said Mayeda. “CalAnimals is a leader in animal welfare, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to work with a remarkable board of directors and lead the premier resource for animal welfare agencies throughout the State.”
Mayeda’s goals for CalAnimals include clarifying and expanding the types of veterinary care that may be provided in animal shelters, transitioning learning programs to web based platforms, adding an additional animal control officer training academy, and continuing to lead and support animal welfare agencies as they restructure business practices due to COVID-19.
For more information, visit CalAnimals and DACC websites:
CalAnimals: www.calanimals.org
DACC: www.animalcare.lacounty.gov
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4 Comments
What a joke. She makes a 6 figure salary doing nothing for the animals, leaving rescues who pick up the pieces on their own time and their own dime, saving the very animals she has left to fend for themselves on the streets. As usual, an appointed position…you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
What a joke! Mayeda is INCAPABLE of taking care of a stuffed animal! WTF are you thinking?!?? Maybe the clueless LA County supervisors should next elect Larry Nassar as head coach of the LA County School gymnastics team.
To say the least, I’m very disappointed to see this. Mayeda takes her enormous annual salary and does nothing to help animals or the community.
All she cares about is her paycheck.
She has done ZERO positive change, she is ineffective, lazy and useless. I do hope you make a better choice next time unless you want our community to remain the same with animals roaming around the streets, 1000s of backyard breeders without being fined, people unable to afford to take care of all the strays, endless breeding of dogs and cats on the streets, growing number of animals killed at the shelters Run by Mayeda. I’m disgusting.
Marcia Mayeda is not suitable for this position for several reasons. One of the most glaring reasons she is “advising lawmakers on proposed changes to animal-related laws especially as they relate to public safety”. The following is my first hand account of a recent lawsuit in which Ms. Mayeda was personally named as a defendant. A whistleblower came to me and a colleague of mine with explosive evidence of misconduct and we conveyed the evidence to the principals involved and a lawsuit was filed. Here is why Ms. Mayeda should not be appointed to this position:
Ms. Mayeda was personally named as a defendant in a recent lawsuit against LA County, by the family of Pamela DeVitt, when she was killed by a pack of dogs who had been free roaming in the Littlerock area, despite continuous calls by neighbors to pick up the dogs for well over a year. When evidence was brought forward by a county whistleblower that Ms. Mayeda and her staff had “covered up” their culpability, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money in litigation were spent to defend her. The evidence was overwhelming and finally after 5 years of litigation and using every absurd excuse in the book to try and defend her, one of which was “Animal Control is not obligated to protect the public”, the county supervisors settled with the family for $1.2 million. This money, fyi, came DIRECTLY out of Ms. Mayeda’s animal control BUDGET, she still retains her $350K+ a year salary. THE MORE IMPORTANT POINT, is that Mayeda told the Supervisors after Ms. DeVitt’s tragic death that her department never saw the dogs prior to the attack, despite ample documentation to the contrary. In addition, weeks after Ms. DeVitt was mauled to death, Marcia ELIMINATED THE DUTY of animal control to PROTECT THE PUBLIC from dangerous dogs by changing the wording in the local ordinance (which had been in place since 1967). Ord 10.12.090 Capture and Custody of Animals. The ordinance read since the year 1967 “The director SHALL capture and take into custody Dogs and other animals running at large in violation of a state statute or local ordinance”. Ms. Mayeda replaced the word “SHALL” to “IS AUTHORIZED” wiping out her liability from future negligence. She then proceeded to inform the Supervisors that this wording would offer more protection to the public, when in fact changing that solitary word “SHALL” to “AUTHORIZED TO” only protects her from further lawsuits, as pointed out by the judge in the case.
Additionally, she routinely violates Senate Bill 1785 known as the Hayden Law, by refusing to turn over dogs on death row to reputable rescues and shelters. I personally have had to involve my attorney on several of these battles with Ms Mayeda and have even taken one case to the court of appeal and won. I have also offered advice and consulted with numerous rescues and recently a municipal shelter that tried to rescue a dog from on of Mayeda’s shelters. Each time she refuses to turn over the dogs and kills them instead, violating the Hayden Law.
Senate Bill 1785, which was passed in 1999, expanded the rights and duties of publicly funded animal shelters and pounds. Sponsored by former assemblyman and state senator Tom Hay¬den (D-Santa Monica), it requires shelters to main¬tain lost and found lists and to provide the names and addresses of other shelters in the area so that shelters will be able to track animals in the system. It also allows nonprofit animal rescue and adoption groups to obtain shelter animals who are about to be killed and requires shel¬ters to use all reasonable means of checking for owner identification on strays.
One need only google the words “Marcia Mayeda violates Hayden Law” and a host of articles come up as long as your arm. She was successfully sued for violating the Hayden Law in 2008 by a former volunteer, Kathy Nguyen.