Animal Control Director Calls for Santa Clarita Study

The director of Los Angeles County’s Department of Animal Care and Control said Thursday that a task force should be created to reevaluate the role of the department in the Santa Clarita Valley as the area becomes more urbanized.

Director Brian Berger’s call for a task force was prompted by an investigation, ordered by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday, into alleged animal cruelty at a Saugus ranch.

The investigation cleared a horse owner of cruelty allegations, but found deficiencies in the department’s performance in the Santa Clarita Valley, Berger said. As a result, one animal-control officer at the Castaic Animal Shelter will undergo a mental and physical examination to see if he is still capable of performing his duties, Berger said. He would not discuss the case in detail.

Berger said the investigation of the Saugus ranch case, coupled with an earlier investigation into his department’s handling of a similar case last October, convinced him that the time has come to reassess staffing priorities and enforcement policies because of the Santa Clarita Valley’s changing character.

As an example, Berger described the department’s typical past response to a common problem in livestock country--escaped cattle roaming the countryside. Fifteen years ago, he said, animal-control officers would telephone a rancher and warn him to gather up his cattle and fix his fences.

Today, an animal-control officer should take a more aggressive approach to make sure the animals do not wander into nearby housing developments, he said. “What worked in the past might not work today,” Berger said.

Berger said the department will have to start recruiting volunteers to help the five-officer staff of the Castaic Animal Shelter.

The investigation ordered by the Board of Supervisors was prompted by complaints that animal-control officers did not respond quickly when a rancher charged that a horse owner had left three horses at a Saugus ranch without food and water and had failed to care for an oozing wound on one horse’s head.

Berger would not give details, but said animal-control officers did not handle the situation promptly. He said a veterinarian determined the animals had not been abused and said the head wound was probably caused in a corral accident.

Nonetheless, the horses were impounded because the owner, Tony Floyde, had not complied with earlier orders by animal-control officers to provide the animals with better living conditions, Berger said. Instead of taking the animals to a ranch in Palmdale as he had promised, Floyde left the animals at the ranch in Saugus, Berger said.

The three horses remain impounded at a shelter in Downey.