How did Best Friends Animal Society’s recommended policies lead to the firing of two employees from the city’s animal shelter because of their efforts to protect animals? According to media reports, two Indianapolis Animal Care Services employees were fired for screening potential adopters to ensure that animals weren’t being released to individuals who had been convicted of certain violent crimes in the past three years, including the following:

Domestic battery

Neglect of a dependent

Sexual violence

Murder

Find out how Best Friends Animal Society and similar groups promote policies, such as banning criminal background checks, that put animals in harm’s way:

Indianapolis Animal Care Services Required Background Checks Until Best Friends Recommended Otherwise

According to reports, one of the former employees said that she had recently become alarmed when she “learned a dog, named Champagne, [had been] adopted out to a couple with five animal cruelty or abandonment violations on MyCase. The dogs had also been previously adopted by the same couple and later confiscated before the two came back into Animal Care Services to re-adopt them.”

After the firing, Indianapolis Animal Care Services reportedly released a statement saying that, although screening had been implemented after the facility adopted another dog, named Deron, to an individual who tortured him to death, it had stopped screening at the behest of Best Friends Animal Society, with which the agency started partnering earlier this year, in order to increase “open adoptions”—that is, giving animals away for free to anyone who will take them without any effort to ensure that they’re offering a good, responsible, and safe home.

“I personally could not send an animal home with somebody like that [convicted of cruelty to animals] and be able to sleep at night. If you know that animal’s not going to be treated well, and I couldn’t live with that and it’s not fair to the animals to put them into that situation just because they [shelter leadership] want their numbers to look good. That’s so immoral.”

—Kylee Fox, recently fired former Indianapolis Animal Care Services employee

According to the podcast featuring the former Indianapolis Animal Care Services employees, animals at the shelter were routinely warehoused and kept confined to crates up to 23.5 hours a day. They were deprived of necessary veterinary care, and maggots and feces were in and around kennels and crates.

What’s Wrong With the ‘No-Kill’ Policies Best Friends Animal Society Pushes For?

The dangerous policies pushed by groups like Best Friends shamelessly sacrifice quality of life in exchange for meaningless “live release rates” and marketing slogans that deceive the public under the pretext that they “save” animals. They don’t. The group leads a national effort to target and vilify open-admission shelters for having to euthanize some animals.

Best Friends Animal Society and similar groups promote policies that aren’t in the best interests of animals or the public. Instead, they encourage the following:

Turning away unwanted or even stray animals as well as stopping field services and cruelty investigations

Warehousing animals for months or years

Keeping animals for long periods in cramped cages and kennels designed only for temporary housing

Keeping animals in crates and other inhumane makeshift quarters when regular cages and kennels are full, sometimes in areas of a facility not designed to hold animals—e.g., hallways, offices, garages, and even bathrooms

“No-kill” policies also harm and endanger residents. It was recently reported that the wife of a man killed by roaming dogs in Detroit is suing the city and its animal control department because complaints about the animals before the fatal attack had allegedly gone unaddressed. According to the report, “The lawsuit suggests that attempts by [a] nonprofit and [the] city to avoid euthanasia have created a dangerous environment for Detroiters. The no-kill model is ‘utterly ineffective, reckless, and deadly,’ the lawsuit argues.” According to Best Friends Animal Society’s website, “Detroit Animal Services is a partner of Best Friends.”

Make Sure You Aren’t Part of the Turn-Away Sheltering Crisis

Shelters should serve as safe havens for animals. There should be no waiting lists, no surrender fees, and no excuses. Dogs and cats are more than numbers on a balance sheet—they’re vulnerable, sensitive beings who need and deserve our protection.

Please contact Indianapolis’ elected officials today to demand an investigation into conditions and policies at the facility, call for the reinstatement and strengthening of its adoption screening processes immediately, and urge it to rehire the two employees who were fired for trying to prevent animals from being neglected or abused.

If your local shelter has harmful policies and restricts or turns away animals, please speak up and encourage humane, responsible “socially conscious sheltering.” The basic steps are simple: Document your experiences, gather support, and make your case. Your involvement can make a world of difference to the companion animals in your community who need you the most. Click the link below to learn how you can help, and follow the links in each section for useful sample statements and letters.

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