Dogs on Skid Row Are Suffering, and Los Angeles Is Letting It Happen
“We have laws in place. Enforce them.”
That’s the message in a new PETA video that takes actors Jesse Kove and David Chokachi, and influencer Nathan the Cat Lady, into one of Los Angeles’ most visible and long-overlooked crisis zones: Skid Row.
You may know Skid Row as the roughly 50-block area in downtown Los Angeles where thousands of unhoused residents live in tents, shelters, and temporary encampments. What fewer people see is that animals are suffering there, too. Under current law in Los Angeles, dogs must be spayed or neutered. But many in the area are reportedly being bred, neglected, and denied veterinary care, —all while city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, turn a blind eye.
Guided by the founders of Starts With One Today (SWOT), Jonathan and Victoriah Bech Parker, and volunteer Joey Tuccio, the group traverses the area both on foot and by vehicle and witnesses cruelty and neglect firsthand. First, they passed a storefront where a female Yorkie is apparently being bred with her own sons. Then, they stop near a family of caged pugs who can do nothing but peer out between the bars of a pen lined with a dirty tarp.
We were told that one of the pugs exploited for breeding gave birth less than a week prior, but was hit by a car and killed due to carelessness. A male pug was tied up ten feet away, his short tether limiting his entire world to just a few feet.
The group could do nothing to help a mother dog who has allegedly been urinating blood for months because her owners refuse veterinary care and continue to breed her illegally.
Laws do not help animals if officials do not enforce them. On Skid Row and across Los Angeles, animals suffer while the city turns a blind eye.
After SWOT reported the situation to Animal Control, Bech Parker says officers issued a citation but left the dog where she was. According to activists working to help, police and animal control officers report that they’ve been told by Mayor Bass’s office to stand down and NOT apply animal protection and spay/neuter laws to unhoused people.
How You Can Help Dogs on Skid Row
Skid Row itself is a microcosm of Los Angeles as a whole, where the mandatory spay/neuter ordinance, breeding moratorium, and anti-cruelty laws are widely ignored.
How long will Mayor Bass be allowed to fail the city’s animals before Governor Newsom steps in and forces her?
Please urge Mayor Bass to enforce Los Angeles’ animal protection laws on Skid Row and throughout the city.
