One measure of animal shelter safety is the number of animal bites. OC Animal Care (OCAC) and OC Community Resources (OCCR) flagrantly lied about their numbers, to keep kennel areas closed. They have now been exposed through county Public Records.
The shelter doesn’t take data seriously but we should. The correct number of bites we’ll give is based on Public Records. We’ll use a spreadsheet from the county-wide database of thousands of animal bites and a second one OC disclosed only after months of delay and obstruction. This Public Records information allows us to debunk the county’s false claims.
OCAC-OCCR lied to the public and the Community Outreach Committee in April 2023. Here is a portion of the presentation slide they used. We added the necessary corrections in red. The real number of bites is about double what OC claimed.
OCAC gave false information to the Grand Jury (p. 19 of the Grand Jury Report, which can be downloaded in full here). Here is a section of that page with the information the county gave for 2022. There is no conceivable explanation for understating the 2022 bites to the public by a whopping 78%.
The OCAC “Fact Checker” document, among its other false claims, says that “after implementing the adoption-by-appointment model the shelter bite rate to visitors decreased by 87% when comparing 2021 to 2019”. That’s another lie, fabricated by under-reporting the 2021 bites.
OCCR even had the audacity to apply for an award from the National Association of Counties, falsely claiming its pandemic-era adoption system “has substantially reduced the in-shelter bite rate”. The true reduction in bite rate was modest, and largely explained by the lower numbers of animals and people. Enough lies.
Was this an accidental error? Not likely. A simple graph shows that undercounting of bites escalated from 2020 to 2022, suggesting that it was serving a purpose.
OCAC used the bite rate to perpetuate pandemic-era restrictions. To this day, it prevents the public from walking through the kennel area (the only shelter in the region with this restriction). Let’s look at the truth, specifically on dog bites, leaving out incidents involving other animals. Did shelter policies reduce dog bites? What would a fair comparison of 2019 to 2022 look like? Look at all the reductions in activity at the shelter in that period:
- 27% reduction in volunteer hours
- 21% reduction in kennel attendants
- 34% reduction in dog adoptions
Fewer dog adoptions, fewer staff, fewer volunteers. Add up these effects and you expect a dramatic reduction in dog bites. The shelter experienced a drop of about 44% which, in light of the above numbers, is disappointing. The continuation of pandemic-era restrictions did not improve safety. (More detailed analysis and other reports are available on OCShelter.com.)
There is additional evidence of the shelter’s failed policies: In 2022-2023 there was an increase in severe bites, including a recent life-threatening incident.
The decisions to keep kennels off-limits and disregard the Strategic Plan were not the result of a bite-prevention drive. Rather, OCAC-OCCR management wanted to excuse poor performance and make their own job easier. They used a fabricated safety record as a tool for their own ends.
Key actors in this scandal are Monica Schmidt, who oversaw the production of the false statistics, and Sean Fulton, who intervened to prevent the disclosure of the correct data (PRA 23-3221). OC Community Resources Director Dylan Wright was informed about gross discrepancies in the bite counts (PRA 23-3430). Rather than taking corrective action, Dylan Wright elevated Monica Schmidt to Interim Director and rewarded Sean Fulton (who resides out-of-state) with a $200,000 custom-made no-bid contract.
If the shelter wants to improve safety, it should hire more kennel staff, improve training, systematically assess animal behavior, and reduce overcrowding by streamlining adoptions. All these are elements of the Strategic Plan and the Grand Jury report – both of which OCAC-OCCR management chose to disregard. We can only conclude that they have no interest in safety – or the truth. Tell the Board of Supervisors to clean up this mess: Order an independent audit and bring in outside experts to fix the shelter’s broken policies.
Postscript. OC Animal Care and OC Community Resources want the Board of Supervisors to disregard unfavorable data. We invite county leaders to review the spreadsheets we are using, straight out of Public Records. Here is the information for anyone interested in the data:
– In order to find the correct numbers, we got a copy of the county-wide database of thousands of animal bites, and we pulled the bites that occurred at the shelter’s address into a smaller spreadsheet. It’s just a subset of the official big one. We may have still missed some bites, because, in its usual sloppiness, OCAC enters its own address in two dozen different ways, and sometimes enters no address at all. (OCAC-OCCR just don’t take data seriously.)
– The above spreadsheet didn’t specify whether the bite victim was staff, volunteer, or public. When that information matters, we used a different county spreadsheet. The county (adding secrecy to its sloppiness) only provided this one after months of delay and obstruction. This spreadsheet is not 100% complete (but it’s close). Deficient reporting is habitual at the shelter and OC Community Resources.
These two county spreadsheets differ slightly and might be incomplete. It’s possible that the county kept some incidents hidden altogether – in which case the misinformation is even more severe.
Michael Mavrovouniotis is retired and lives in Irvine. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and served as Director of Research at an investment firm. Over the years he has volunteered in many local organizations, including animal shelters.
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