Lawsuit: $2.45 million dollar “boondoggle” consultant will cause animals to die on the streets
Kristen Hassen contract called “useless, unnecessary, excessive and financially imprudent” and her approach of leaving animals on the street “more suited for the 19th century than today.”
An amended Petition for Writ of Mandate has been filed in the lawsuit against the Riverside County Pound. In the original Complaint, plaintiffs alleged “a shocking, callous, and ongoing failure to follow California law” as a result of “carrying out a policy to kill healthy, adoptable animals, instead of spending resources feeding, caring for and housing them.”
According to the attorneys representing the plaintiffs,
The amended Petition adds waste of taxpayer funds to the case for hiring a Director of Animal Services [Erin Gettis] with no qualifications or experience…
It also adds a claim of waste of taxpayer funds for the county executive’s “hiring a fringe consultant, Kristen Hassen… for $2.5 million to fix the mess he created by hiring Gettis in the first place.”
Hassen will not fix the mess Gettis created because she praised it, despite Gettis and her staff leaving dead animals in their cages and other animals covered in excrement and killing more animals than any other reporting “shelter” in the United States.
Indeed,
At Austin Pets Alive, Hassen was one of the chief architects and promoters of Human Animal Support Services (HASS), urging “shelters” to make pandemic-era closures permanent by turning away stray animals. She also sat on the National Animal Control Association board, which encouraged shelters to re-abandon animals people found on the streets. These policies manipulate intake and placement rates by abandoning the fundamental purpose — indeed the very definition — of a shelter; to provide a safety net of care for lost, homeless, and unwanted animals. Under HASS, “Intakes of healthy strays and owner surrenders doesn’t exist anymore,” and there is “No kennel space for rehoming, stray hold or intake.” Instead, the community — whose taxes and donations already pay for shelters — is expected to pick up the slack (hence the euphemism “community sheltering”).
Plaintiffs allege that “Hassen’s animal shelter philosophy is more suited for the 19th century than today,” when a large number of animals living and dying on the streets was common: “Hassen finds refusing to help pets suffering on the streets not only acceptable but preferred to allowing them the comfort of shelter, nutrition, veterinary care and a home where they are loved.” Animals have died as a result of these policies, with thousands more unaccounted for.
Although Hassen claims that “people who find a stray can ‘register’ the stray online with the shelter” and “this is successful in getting more lost animals ‘back home’ without that animal having to come into the shelter,” plaintiffs documented the opposite. At one of the shelters that embraced HASS,
[Hassen] claimed her program had an almost “100%” success rate of registered animals being returned back to their owner/home. In 2023, 3,860 “found animals” were registered with El Paso Animal Services and only 793 “registered animals” made it back home as reported by the finders, far afield of her claim of being close to 100%. The status of the remaining 3,067 animals is unknown. Whether they even survived is unknown since there is no follow-up done by the shelter. In 2023, a total of 4,703 animals within the shelter system are missing/unaccounted for.
The plaintiffs ask the Court to void the contract and demand the return of any money expended. Hassen is paid roughly $95,000 per month.
The amended complaint follows pleas by rescuers and other animal advocates for county officials not to contract with Hassen because of her history of praising regressive pounds, defending abusive directors, and contributing to many of the problems experienced by the Riverside County pound. Officials ignored those pleas.
This begs the question:
Instead of hiring a “shelter” director who doesn’t know what they are doing and then spending millions more on a consultant who will exacerbate problems, why not hire a director who is passionate about saving lives, has the skill set to do so, and is willing to spend the money the taxpayers allotted for its intended purpose: to care for animals?
To date, Riverside County officials refuse to answer this question or any of the plaintiff’s substantive concerns, arguing instead that the Court should simply dismiss the lawsuit and allow them to continue the policy of abandoning animals to the street and neglecting, abusing, and killing those they do take in.
