Animal-Rights Activists Protest at Shelter : Demonstration: An employee of the West Valley facility is accused of killing prospective pets unnecessarily.

Carrying signs reading “Animal Slaughterhouse” and chanting “This Shelter Kills,” 24 animal-rights activists rallied Monday outside the West Valley Animal Shelter in Chatsworth to protest what they called the unnecessary killing of dogs and other pets at the facility.

The demonstrators, many of whom belong to a local animal-rights group called Citizens to Save Our Pets, called on the city to fire a an employee of the shelter whom they dubbed “the executioner” and to investigate the deaths of animals at shelters throughout Los Angeles.

Department of Animal Regulation General Manager Robert I. Rush, the official in charge of the city’s six animal shelters, said that protesters’ charges of unnecessary destruction of animals throughout the Los Angeles shelter system were unfounded.

“If somebody’s done something wrong, we’ll drop the house on them,” he said. “This is the best animal-control agency in the world. Period.”

Protesters charged that Dwayne Stinson, the shelter’s animal-care technician supervisor, repeatedly authorized the destruction of animals before those interested in adopting them as pets had time to visit the shelter. Although protesters did not accuse Stinson of violating any law, they assailed him as lacking compassion toward animals and called for his immediate ouster.

“The man is cruel and inhumane, and everybody who is in the movement knows Mr. Stinson,” protest organizer Carol Ellis said.

Stinson declined to comment.

Among Stinson’s harshest critics Monday was protester Jay Tell, a Canoga Park resident who charged that Stinson improperly permitted the killing of a stray dog Tell brought to the shelter in early May.

Tell said he brought the dog to the facility because, three weeks after his daughter found the otherwise docile animal in their yard, the dog bit a neighbor while the man was mowing his lawn.

Tell’s wife sought the advice of animal-control authorities, who told them that by law they had to bring any stray dog to the shelter, Tell said. Tell left the dog at the shelter.

At the end of the 10-day quarantine period mandated by city law for animals which have bitten people, he visited the dog and was told by shelter officials that his application for adoption was proceeding normally, Tell said.

Two days later, Tell received a telephone call from Stinson, who said he had mistakenly authorized the destruction of the dog and apologized for his action, Tell said.

Gary Olsen, the Department of Animal Regulation official in charge of the West Valley shelter and Stinson’s supervisor, said the department was investigating the incident.

He said the department acted legally in destroying the dog, because Tell had waited three weeks to bring the stray to the shelter and because the animal had bitten someone. But he said Stinson should have contacted Tell before he authorized the dog’s death.

“There was a lack of communication, and something was done about it immediately,” Olsen said. “We made sure that that will never happen again.”

He said shelter officials had not fired Stinson or forced him to change jobs, but he declined to comment on whether Stinson had been disciplined in any other way.

Demonstrators said they will continue to protest daily outside the West Valley shelter until the city fires Stinson.