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Three weeks after two independent investigators substantiated claims of mistreatment of animals and violation of laws at Indianapolis Animal Care & Control, and the subsequent resignation of IACC Administrator Steve Talley, more disturbing reports of suffering and death within the facility are surfacing.

Late last night I received the investigators' reports. There is a bit of confusion since the reports are substantially similar and both seemed to be signed by Joan Isaacs, but only one was signed by Karen Jensen. I presume the confusion will be addressed at the hearing this afternoon.

Report submitted solely by Joan Isaacs

Report submitted under Karen Jensen and Joan Isaacs' names

The full text of the grievance filed August 10th, 2008 with the IACC advisory board, complete with all attachments, as well as a complete archive of full-resolution photos depicting various conditions within IACC is now available as a .zip archive file. The file can be downloaded by clicking here. Please note that the file is 16MB due to the large number of high-resolution photographs. People using Windows XP or later should have no trouble opening the archive.

We received a notice from the Erin Pratt in Public Safety that the hearing and IACC board meeting would be in the Public Assembly room on the 2nd floor of the City-County building, NOT in room 260, as had been stated previously.

This update is long overdue, and I apologize for that. My last update e-mail asked many critical questions about the upcoming grievance. Fortunately, someone passed that e-mail along to Mr. Newman who was kind enough to spend time responding to the questions, as well as assuring me that his aggressive, prosecutorial demeanor at the August 13th board meeting was not at all an expression of bias. So apparently the considerable number of us who interpreted it that way were all mistaken, as Mr. Newman was actually supporting our right

Following numerous firsthand observations of animal care & treatment violations at Indianapolis Animal Care & Control (IACC) which were dismissed by IACC Administrator Steve Talley, a group of citizens has prepared an official grievance to be filed with the IACC Advisory Board for hearing/resolution at the IACC board meeting scheduled for 6pm, August 13th at the IACC shelter, 2600 S. Harding Street.

Humane Society of Indianapolis (HSI) announced on Friday the hiring of their new executive director.  Seemingly in keeping with the criticism that has plagued the society for years, this decision is already facing skeptics.

In a response to an inquiry from 7/21/08, Indianapolis Animal Care & Control Administrator Steve Talley issued the agencies "official" conclusions about the 2-day suffering of a seriously debilitated, maggot-infested kitten discovered by volunteers on June 24. The circumstances surrounding this are outlined in a letter of complaint filed with the IACC advisory board on July 4th. You may read the entirety of the letter by clicking here.

Indianapolis Animal Care & Control has released their kennel statistics for June. Normally, I take the time to compile them and summmarize on the ACCess page, but some quick math impressed me so much that I had to present the raw data now (click here to download the PDF file).

While we applaud progressive changes at Indianapolis Animal Care & Control proposed by Public Safety Director Newman, we have to ask why it requires the intervention of such a high-level person to get things accomplished at IACC? Are we mistaken in assuming that the management and improvement of the IACC division is the responsibility of the IACC administrator, and not the Director of Public Safety? So why would Director of Public Safety Newman want/need to be personally undertaking changes/improvements at IACC?