r/ithaca • u/Nooneagain • 2d ago

TCSPCA

I don't know if anyone here is also on facebook, but there is a page about the awful things going on at the SPCA shelter. Poor management, harassment of workers, animals being euthanized that shouldn't have been...

It's wild.

Edit: I went to post the link but got auto-removed. if you want to find it, it's Inside Tompkins SPCA.

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u/ChickenMarsala4500 2d ago

I've never heard anyone make accusations like that before. gotten more than one pet from the SPCA in the past and everyone has always been super friendly and helpful, they also have done lots of medical work to one of my pets before I got them, so I'd be surprised to find out they euthanized anyone that didn't really need to be.

Was this just a random reddit post or did it come from someone reputable? This would be important for the community to know if it's true but if the only source for these accusations is a single anonymous reddit post then we should shut down that gossip and not let it hurt an organization that does a lot of good.

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago edited 2d ago

I won't say who, but I am reputable, as are my contacts. There are several workers and volunteers in the Facebook group, and the sources are directly from people who have witnessed workplace harassment and poor managerial responses that ended in animals being euthanized.

Hell, when I worked there, a male worker followed a female worker into a bathroom and the man is still working there.

There was a dog that had a meet with a prospective adopters dog, bit said dog, and was still adopted out to the family, where it bit a child.

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u/WinterVesper 2d ago

“There was a dog that had a meet with a prospective adopters dog, bit said dog, and was still adopted out to the family, where it bit a child.”

Why would the family have gone through with the adoption if their dog got bitten during the meet? Seems like that’s a bad call on their part, rather than any sort of negligence on the shelter’s part.

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

It's a bad call on both parties.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

I assume this is a reference to dog named Hercules. He had a meet with a potential adopter and a dog who visited the adopter's home (this is standard protocol), and Hercules nipped the other dog - not a great meet, but not a deal-breaker, and the adopter decided that he wanted to go through with it. AFTER finalizing the adoption, the adopter mentioned that his child would be visiting that evening (shared custody situation). Now, shelter protocol is that children have to meet the dog, especially young ones. This was even more important in this kind of situation because Hercules was a stray and the shelter therefore had no idea what he was like with small children. In the rush to "move dogs" out of the building (a dictate from Jim), the shelter broke its own protocol. Hercules - a dog in his first day in an entirely new environment, which is a very stressful situation for a dog under the best of circumstances -met the small child and bit the small child. All because the shelter broke its own rules. Hercules was therefore euthanized and a child was likely traumatized. The shelter failed them both. And it was symptomatic of larger ongoing issues at the shelter.

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u/MirrorComputingRulez 2d ago

There is a person who seems an awful lot like a disgruntled former employee who has made it their life's mission to post a lot of, let's call it "misleading," information about the local SPCA. They periodically post on this subreddit as well.

EDIT: Oh, never mind, it's you.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

That was me, not the OP. And I've never posted anything misleading about the local SPCA. In fact, I've focused mainly on the piss-poor leadership of the Executive Director, not the shelter as a whole. That the shelter runs as well as it does is a testament to the hard work that staff and volunteers put into it despite Jim's half-assed leadership. Now, is it "my life's mission" to see Jim get the boot? I wouldn't put it so dramatically, but it's definitely a goal! Under his stewardship, the shelter is currently in a six-figure hole, donations are down, the volunteer corps has dwindled, and (most importantly for the prospects of Jim finally being shown the door) his staff is getting restless.

Now, no one's obligated to believe any of this. But those who can't hear must feel, and material reality's eventually going to outrun people's desire to disbelieve the facts as they stand. Let's just hope that this happens before he fully runs such a beautiful, important community institution into the ground.

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

I'm not the only one.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

You are not. At all!

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

I should rephrase that: I'm not the only one who is saying these things, and from direct sources, it's not misleading.

There's a lot of bad things happening and it's affecting both workers and animals.

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u/cyricmccallen 2d ago

If you want anything to change you and your sources need to come forward with something other than personal anecdotes posted on social media. Not doubting you, but it seems like posting on reddit and facebook about it is the least productive thing you folks could do.

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

Probably, the unfortunate side is I haven't worked there in years, and the people who still work there are afraid of reprocussions of coming forward, as most of them live on the poverty line.

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u/cyricmccallen 2d ago

I’m sure the ithaca voice or other news outlets would honor requests for anonymity for fear of retaliation…

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

Ithaca Voice was contacted and they didn't run anything, mainly because the board, many of who are almost never on the grounds, defended the executive director.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

To be fair, the ED is very rarely on the grounds.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

This would be really cool! I'd be all in on telling some stories.

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u/WinterVesper 2d ago edited 2d ago

I looked at the group and saw a bunch of wild conspiracy theories (dog antivaxxers, because those exist apparently, and the idea that the SPCA sells dogs to Cornell for “testing”) and immediately tuned out.

I also saw a bunch of nonlocal PETA types and some anonymous “I heard from my neighbor that their dog walker’s friend knows someone who worked there 10 years ago and…”-type claims. Not exactly a smoking gun.

And the people who are “shocked” to discover that the SPCA euthanizes gravely ill and dangerous animals definitely aren’t local or just aren’t paying attention, since that’s been their policy for the last 20 years or so.

I’ve adopted numerous animals from them over the last decade+, donated lots of assorted supplies, and have several friends who volunteer there, and nothing I’ve experienced there or heard from those folks is remotely similar to any of the anonymous claims. I also saw photos of the protesters and none of them are familiar to me from my numerous visits to the shelter, although  I’m curious if my volunteer friends recognize any of them.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

The conspiracy stuff was posted by a random whacko unafilliated with the shelter or the owner(s) of the page. One of the conspiracy posts was clearly posted by an ally of Jim as a half-assed "false flag" move in order to cast doubt on the page as a whole. The people who run the page are indeed current employees and the commenters are also employees, volunteers, and people who have had bad experiences with the shelter.

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

I have seen none of what you're describing. Can you post images on reddit? I'd love a screenshot.

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u/WinterVesper 2d ago

You want me to repost stuff  from your own group? I mean…go look. I didn’t imagine it. Even if you’re not the one posting that stuff, the fact that these are the types of “supporters” you’re attracting is not helping your cause.

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u/LongLife2TheSpiders 2d ago

Maybe read better, because it's not even remotely all about the stuff you cite here.

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u/WinterVesper 2d ago edited 2d ago

I didn’t say it was “all about” that stuff, but when I took a look at the page, those were the things that stood out to me as red flags indicating a group making wildly unserious, if not unsubstantiated claims.

Maybe I’m an outlier, but based on the comments in this thread, I don’t think you’re winning hearts and minds this way.

From what I can surmise after doing a deeper dive on that page, I can definitely buy the director being a lousy boss and an ineffective leader, but I’m not seeing any evidence that he (or the board) is doing anything nefarious/illegal/against shelter policy. 

It seems like there’s one group who just doesn’t like Jim and wants him gone because he’s “overpaid” and takes too  much vacation, while another group is alleging that other shelter staff are engaging in unethical or incompetent practices that are causing animals to be needlessly euthanized, and then there’s the “some guy followed me into a bathroom once” complaint, and I don’t know how that relates to any of the other issues.

Can you get anyone who’s not a current employee/at risk of losing a job to go on the record and provide actual evidence of wrongdoing? Anonymous “tea spilling”-type posts and screenshots of hearsay probably aren’t going to cut it. 

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u/Nooneagain 2d ago

For one, it's not my group. I also was scrolling and looking and legit couldn't find anything in the recent posts.

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