NYC DOH Finally Opens ACC Manhattan Adoption Center
It took city officials decades to develop a space to shield ACC's everyday horrors from potential adopters.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s November 1, 2024. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, the contractor currently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City opened its new Manhattan adoption center.
Plans for the center, which shunts potential adopters away from the grim everyday fuckery that goes on elsewhere at ACC, were first announced in 2015. But the city’s health department, which for some reason is responsible for what happens to homeless companion animals in NYC, cares not at all about what happens to homeless companion animals in NYC.
Witness recently departed health commissioner Ashwin Vasan, vomitously feted as he skipped off to a plum post at a medical college, where one hopes he will be haunted the rest of his days by the spirits of thousands who suffered and died on his so-called watch. Him and every useless overpaid paper-shuffling seat-warmer who preceded him. But let’s move on.
Taking nine years to convert a garage would be negligence enough, but it’s really closer to 30. There is no reason other than indifference that explains why it took nearly three decades from ACC’s founding, inauspicious as it was, to complete a proper adoption space in goddamn Manhattan of all places.
That’s what happens when your organization has an ossified, go along to get along board content to preserve the status quo (wholesale carnage) and therefore has not voted in a new chairperson in 11 years. When you’re schmoozing with elites, it’s hard to cede the seat. If it rhymes, it’s a rule.
It isn’t just ACC and the health department. The city’s department of design and construction — the people who are supposed to make sure stuff gets built — is historically inept at fulfilling its remit. Discerning how much DDC contributed to the slog should make for a nice freedom of information request (which City Hall will either ignore or render moot via redactions).
“Many potential adopters say it’s too depressing to watch people drop off unwanted dogs and cats at the shelter,” the Daily News wrote in 2015. “By creating a separate adoption center, AC&C [NKA ACC] may be able to attract adopters who are reluctant to enter the shelter.”
“This will be a happy and friendly place,” ACC CEO Risa Weinstock told the News. In other words, the adoption center will be segregated from the chaos and misery that have reigned at ACC since its inception.
There’s a reason slaughterhouses don’t have windows.
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Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
ASPCA, which like HSUS hoards resources badly needed by small facilities, is sad those facilities are having a tough time caused by them.
Forty-four dogs died in a fire at a St. Lawrence County kennel for dogs rescued from the meat trade.
Oh look, the state of New York is finally interested in companion animals.
Pray for Eeyore, congenitally mutilated by breeders, abandoned, then handed over to NYC ACC. (He has a home lined up, if you believe ACC.)
Leave the feral kittens alone, maggots.
There are several “That’s great, but …” moments in the story of a Buffalo-area police detective helping a woman and a 6-year-old girl adopt a dog, and they all fall away when you see Essie (girl) and Poncho (dog) together. (Bonus: Poncho was saved from the City of Buffalo Animal Shelter.)
It’s rutting season, which means Strong Island Animal Rescue is on patrol.
A NYC winemaker has launched a new brand that benefits dog rescues in Brooklyn and Lebanon.
Circle Line hosted a Halloween cruise-slash-adoption event for dogs, for those who need more canines in costume.
"Pets Are Part of the Family, and Part of New York City’s Fabric"
And finally: Good. But apparently not good enough.
Cruelty case update
An Otsego County man was allowed to plead to a reduced charge after he beat a kitten to death with a baseball bat.
The incident occurred last March. Timothy Melius, Jr., 39, of Pittsfield, initially received a top charge of aggravated animal cruelty, which is a class E felony, New York’s least severe felony category. Class E felony penalties range from four years in prison to no penalty.
Rather than try the case, Otsego County District Attorney John Muehl pled Melius down to a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child. He was sentenced to two years probation and fined $250.
Perpetrators of domestic violence often harm or threaten to harm companion animals to terrorize their victims.
Melius was not penalized for beating a kitten to death with a baseball bat.
Update: Timothy Melius, Jr. was arrested on October 31 for violating his probation and was remanded to custody for “possession of firearms despite having multiple court orders prohibiting him from possessing them,” according to the Otsego County Sheriff’s Office.
Adoptables
NYC ACC will hold just one mobile adoption event this weekend, in Brooklyn.
There are some nice NYC adoptable dog profiles at the end of this ASPCA press release.
Skye and Star, pictured above, are two of many now available at Rochester Animal Services.
To the west, a passel of gorgeous cats and dogs await at the City of Buffalo Animal Shelter.
Find a New York adoptable near you on Petfinder.
Food recalls
The FDA issued no new pet food recalls this week. Check here for info on earlier recalls.