New York City Should Start Drowning Dogs Again
After ACC's three-week meltdown, New Yorkers deserve to see what they're subsidizing. Especially the killings.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Update: As of August 14, the ACC website indicates the pound is still shut to intakes. TSNY is now tracking the closure on social media and will continue to do so until the system is again fully functional, or what passes for it.
Update: As of Saturday, August 9, the ACC website indicates the pound system either is again closed to intakes or has not, in fact, reopened since July 18. The Scoop New York has queried the usual suspects.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s August 8, 2025. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, the non-profit contractor currently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City reopened to public intakes, a full three weeks after abandoning its post in collaboration with Mayor Vegan and his NYer-hating, morally deficient “health department.”
Meanwhile, the city press corps continued napping.
For 21 days, ACC, DOH and the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare refused to provide any information on the shutdown to The Scoop New York, ignoring each and all of our queries — including one from yesterday, when for the first time in weeks visitors to the ACC website weren’t slapped with this:
As usual, there were no announcements on the social media platforms ACC chooses to use to inform New Yorkers that the system was again operational. No press releases from ACC, DOH, MOAW or the mayor. And of course, no media coverage.
These shutdowns — in violation of ACC’s deal with the city as an open admission shelter — occur every few months. There have been at least two in 2025. One reason ACC/DOH/MOAW might never announce reopenings is it would make it too easy for ACC watchers to keep track not only of the number of outages but also their duration. A just as likely reason would be DOH/ACC’s 30-year history of laissez-faire ineptitude.
Obfuscation on the part of government flacks is to be expected. Overcoming and exposing that obfuscation is what the fourth estate is for. If only more journalists agreed.
On Monday, political outlet City & State New York published a long-form piece on dogs and New York politics. The story, from City Editor Holly Pretzky, begins with a spot interview with Curtis Sliwa, GOP mayoral nominee and noted fan of cats, outside ACC’s Manhattan kill pound.
Pretzky sets the scene:
“Ninety-seven percent of Americans now, whether they voted for Trump or Harris or they’re apolitical, actually view pets as family members,” [Sliwa] said last month, wearing his trademark red beret and standing next to his wife, Nancy, on a shaded sidewalk outside an animal shelter in East Harlem. Behind him, stressed-out looking people stood at the shelter doors with leashed dogs. Sliwa was there because Animal Care Centers of New York City had recently suspended its new animal intake while the shelter network scrambled to deal with the 1,000 animals – including more than 380 dogs – already crowding its facilities.
Freeze.
Those New Yorkers in line — why are they there? What are they waiting for? Why are they anxious?
If Sliwa was there “because Animal Care Centers of New York City had recently suspended its new animal intake,” might that have had something to do with it? Could it be those New Yorkers were “stressed-out looking” because they know ACC has (again) shut the door on them and their pets, whom they can’t afford to care for, or can’t keep for some other personal reason, but don’t want to see harmed or put to death?
We don’t know, because Pretzky either didn’t ask or did ask and left the material out. This is access journalism. Chat up the politician and ignore the people ACC exists to serve. Those who pay for the building they’re waiting outside of, along with the salaries of everyone who works there.
The story proceeds as such, from its thesis:
As attitudes about dogs’ proximity to personhood continue to shift, the law — and the elected officials who write the laws — are coming to view them as a constituency of sorts, one deserving of substantial public resources.
To undergird the thesis, Pretzky cites a bunch of city and state bills and initiatives proposed and grandstanded-upon but, crucially, not approved by lawmakers. Press releases are not policy. The story doesn’t say the bills became law, but it gives an impression at odds with reality:
When discussing New York City public policy you must also reckon with Albany. Above is the New York State Legislature failing to pass a single major animal-friendly bill two years running. In fact, Albany hasn’t adopted such a bill since 2022, despite constant advocacy and pleading from constituents. That doesn’t fit the thesis, so it doesn’t make the cut.
At the top of the chart is the Shelter Animal Rescue Act. With that one bill, state legislators could require kill “shelters” to offer animals to rescues before exterminating them for space, convenience, or spite, all of which is happening in NYC and NYS as we speak. SARA alone would save countless lives and bring New York much closer to becoming a true no-kill state. It is revenue-neutral, meaning it would cost taxpayers nothing.
Politicians who genuinely care about companion animals would recognize SARA as a gift and rush to get it passed. Yet when New Yorkers busted ass to get SARA sponsored in Albany, it was blocked by the same handful of electeds responsible for holding up dozens of related bills.
Two state pols who must sign off on nearly every animal-centric bill — Binghamton Assembly Member Donna Lupardo and Senator Michelle Hinchey of Kingston, who chair their respective houses’ agriculture committees — are in a unique position to help but have instead chosen to act as the biggest obstacles to animal-friendly legislation in the state.
There is no mention of SARA, Lupardo or Hinchey in the City & State story. Ditto the New York State Animal Protection Federation, a powerful lobby group for kill pound employees that effectively decides which bills succeed in Albany and which die. Including the Companion Animal Protection Act, the original version of SARA, which would also have required kill pounds statewide to publish their intake and “euthanasia” figures, and which was opposed by the “animal protection” lobbyists at “the Fed” because “numbers” — kill data — “can be misconstrued.” Yeah.
As for the city, you can point to all the happy talk and dog mayors you want, but New Yorkers will tell you it’s mostly for show. On Wednesday, the estimable Shelter Reform Action Committee — tireless advos who know what’s what better than anyone — released its summary of the most recent ACC board meeting, held on July 1. Based on what committee members heard there, they predicted the coming ACC meltdown, and assessed it like so:
Why hadn’t ACC admitted to the DOH that it was severely understaffed, its operating budget wasn’t nearly enough, and that emergency housing had to be created to ease the overcrowding?
Never underestimate ACC’s ability to downplay problems. That's because they know their master — the DOH — doesn’t like to hear bad news.
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [sic], which considers companion animals foremost as harbingers of disease, still oversees ACC only because the City Council and City Hall rejected an advocate-backed bill to establish a department of animal welfare.
The welfare department was the centerpiece of a suite of animal-friendly bills proposed in 2019. I wrote about it for Gothamist that June. “It’s unheard of to have 12 animal bills at one hearing,” longtime ACC watcher Marilyn Galfin told me. “It’s a very exciting time.”
Some of the bills passed, as evidenced by the subsequent self-back-patting. None of them did much to help companion animals in New York City. The big-ticket item for electeds — the foie gras ban that got them on national teevee — was later struck down in court.
The capper: In secret, city electeds downgraded the department of animal welfare to an “office” of animal welfare, which turned out to be one City Hall staffer and her desk. A staffer who for years worked as a spokesperson for NYC ACC and moved directly from one position to the other, eliminating any hope of improving City Hall ACC oversight.
This was a shameless betrayal of New Yorkers who have toiled for decades to get the city to require a modicum of accountability on the part of ACC and its wicked health department stepparents.
That too would undermine City & State’s “NY [heart emoji] PUPS” thesis. Pretsky refers to the scandal only in passing:
In 2019, [City Council Member Justin] Brannan passed a bill to establish the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare with the intention of bringing the city’s animal-related concerns into one portfolio. Initially, Brannan proposed a full-fledged city department for animals, but the bill was watered down to a single office — the first in the nation — which is now staffed with just one (very dedicated) person and has a budget of less than $100,000.
The “bill was watered down.” By whom? DEP workers? No one knows, because Brannan won’t say. And Pretzky either didn’t ask or chose not to publish what she learned. Because her story centers public relations rather than results.
I interviewed Brannan for that Gothamist piece. Here’s how I reported it then:
It remains to be seen whether a department of animal welfare, if established, is the key to finally reforming ACC. When Gothamist spoke with Council Member Justin Brannan, Intro 1478’s primary sponsor, he downplayed the notion, as an aide on the call expounded on ACC’s laudable live release rate.
Common sense says that, at the time of my call, Brannan knew full well there would be no animal welfare department. It’s also evident due to his tepid reaction and because, when later asked to account for it, he suddenly and possibly for the first time lost his voice. When FOILed on it, Brannan and the City Council and City Hall answered with redactions.
The welfare department bill was the city’s SARA equivalent. Its failure, via official subterfuge and self-dealing, set back NYC animal advocacy to this day. But it seems City & State was content to follow up on Intro 1478 by locating a press release and linking to it, as demonstrated in the excerpt above.
As for the “very dedicated” Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare staffer, Director Alexandra Silver has only once in 1.5 years responded to a query from The Scoop New York — a publication that, and I seemingly just can not stress this enough, is fully devoted to animal welfare in New York. It was an automated out-of-office response to a TSNY query concerning Bella, the 6-week-old puppy accused and cleared of killing an infant in Queens and hence disappeared by DOH and ACC.
Silver never got back to me about Bella. Or what she does as MOAW director on a typical workday. Or if her position is full-time. Or how many staffers MOAW has. Or how many complaints MOAW resolves. Or why the MOAW website still looks unfinished. Or why there’s no MOAW social media presence five years after the fact.
None of those questions are scary unless you’re afraid to answer them. Silver had no issue speaking with City & State because she has no fear of City & State. Had Pretsky pressed for further details about her job and MOAW generally, she would not have an insanely hypocritical bullshit quote from Alexandra Silver. (Meanwhile, TSNY’s Bella FOIL, necessitated in part by Silver’s IRL actions rather than her pretty words, has gone nowhere.)
Pretzky interviewed me for her story. We didn’t talk all that long, and there are no quotes in the piece. This is fine. I’ve gotten more than enough ink for one lifetime. Really. No, really.
That said, there are no references or links to TSNY either. I did ask Pretsky, in exchange for my time, to fill me in as to why a pets and New York politics news site wasn’t mentioned in (or linked from) a story about pets and New York politics — again, a recurring theme.
It “ultimately didn’t fit,” Pretsky said via email. “I didn't get too much into the euthanization policies at shelters, as you saw.”
[And now, today’s thesis from The Scoop New York: New York City should start drowning dogs again. — Ed.]
I did see. It was odd, particularly since Pretsky’s story delves into the history of New York City animal control, and how the city around the turn of the 20th century rounded up stray dogs to drown them in the East River.
The politicians and bureaucrats who stood by as the city exterminated dogs in the river are long dead. You can report their lies, or whatever they called “lies” back then, and they can’t get mad at you. Reporters and editors who rely on access to do their jobs don’t do adversarial journalism because it’s not in their interest. Once you start making waves — ripples, even — your emails and calls stop being returned. Your value as an access journalist declines because you don’t have the right names in your contacts. Much, much worse: You’re no longer buddies with the beautiful people in power.
Here is how today’s New York electeds and the bureaucrats they supervise at DOH and ACC do “euthanasia” (tw: reality):
That’s Maverick [61060], being dragged to his death at the ACC extermination facility in Manhattan, for “behavior” issues, in May 2019, about the same time as my phoner with Justin Brannan. Scenes like this one unfold at ACC every day. If it’s not happening right now it will be tomorrow. Yet even people who have seen this video don’t believe it. This is the fault of New York media.
The barbarism of mass drownings in public was long ago superseded by a no less pernicious brand of barbarism with the shades drawn. Still don’t buy it? See spay-neuter-kill. Yes, there are more adoptions and fewer killings today. Yes, politicians have responded to voters’ genuine love of domestic animals by reflecting it back at them. But only when it suits their purposes. That’s about as far as it goes, in New York or nearly anywhere else.
Not only does this allow DOH to conceal dirty ACC business, it gives media an excuse to pretend it isn’t happening or is somehow irrelevant. By throwing up hands and saying it doesn’t “fit.” But regardless of subject matter, if you’re covering politicians and you intentionally wall off politics that cause harm from the harm itself, that’s not journalism. It’s stenography. And it disrespects every New Yorker standing in that line behind Curtis Sliwa.
The City & State story isn’t wrong. Just incomplete. It might not be intended as a propaganda piece, but with its primary sources limited to people in power, it can’t be anything else. That’s how you get a long-form developed over the course of a related historic crisis that barely references the crisis.
If nothing else, reinstating drownings as NYC’s go-to extermination procedure would force the city to show the public what they’re getting from DOH and ACC, and force the media to acknowledge the rest of the story, rather than just the parts that make those responsible look good.
When you’re reporting on Titanic’s maiden voyage, you don’t leave out the iceberg.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.
Related: “Pets are being abandoned, surrendered amid Trump’s immigration crackdown.”
Related: Sherlea Dony and cat Peaches are just two New Yorkers whose household could be obliterated by punitive social service cuts imposed by President Trump and Congress.
NYC carriage operators killed another horse: Lady, 15, was worked to death in the summer heat on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. In response, city electeds want to know who’s responsible for failing to pass a city law that would have saved Lady’s life.
In other abuse-as-entertainment news, Big
CockfightingHorse Racing claimed two more victims this week — Stop Giggling and Setting Sun.Columbia-Greene Humane Society has a reward for information on Petal, an emaciated dog found abandoned in July (and now on the mend).
Saratoga County Animal Shelter is looking for the owner of a male dog found by himself in a parking lot.
A Rochester homeless man could lose his two dogs (“That’s my family.”) after one of them attacked a number of people on a public beach.
A social media influencer and other New Yorkers engineered and executed the rescue of lost cat Scarlet from the subway — and reunited her with her person — with zero help from DOH/ACC, MOAW, FDNY, NYPD or MTA.
The New York City Housing Authority made advocates beg for access to a NYCHA building in Sheepshead Bay to save stranded cats NYCHA insisted weren’t there, then took credit for saving the cats.
Pimping your pet for clicks is always sus but as long as Tati is as happy she looks this is kind of brilliant (and possibly useful, even).
And finally: Brooklyn Cyclones for the win.
Food recalls
No new recall this week, but FDA is “cautioning pet owners that a sample of Darwin’s Natural Pet Products beef dog food made by Arrow Reliance,” due to salmonella.
Thank You So Very much TSNY for reporting the truth about the suffering & premature deaths being perpetrated on our companion animals in NYCACC. As You know aside from the NY Post no one else dare step on the toes of the animal hating bureaucrats. You are absolutely correct stating there is no reason not to pass laws protecting animals or answering questions about it unless there’s something to hide. I quote Risa Weinstock to the Best of my recollection, “NYCACC does not kill healthy adoptable animals” Since that’s a huge boldfaced lie in itself, we can’t believe a word that comes out of their mouths. We are all absolutely horrified at the constant abuse , neglect & killing that happens in those buildings. Now I’m picturing distressed people standing in line waiting to hand their beloved pets to the gates of Hell! Do they know they kill? Do they know the rate at which they kill? I strongly endorse Curtis Sliwa as he has recognized the plight of the animals. I pray changes can be made yesterday. The murdering of our beloved companions has gone on much too long! Thank You Again for giving them a voice!