Best Friends’ Playbook: Manipulation Disguised as Advocacy

How Best Friends’ Tactics Exploit Communities and Animals for Profit

Opinion - Los Angeles is caught in the crosshairs of a carefully orchestrated campaign. Best Friends Animal Society, a powerful national organization adept at leveraging public sentiment, has once again turned its sights on the city’s leadership. Their goal? To strong-arm the Mayor and City Council into embracing their controversial “no-kill” policies. But critics warn this isn’t advocacy—it’s exploitation. Beneath the polished rhetoric lies a calculated fundraising ploy that prioritizes profits over the safety of animals and Angelenos alike.

The Tactics of Shame and Blame

Best Friends’ latest initiative, showcased through their online petition “Return Los Angeles to No-Kill,” exemplifies a high-pressure advocacy tactic often seen in their campaigns. Framed as a grassroots effort, the petition casts Los Angeles leadership as failing the city’s animals. Its language is provocative, the tone urgent, and the imagery carefully chosen to elicit strong emotional reactions. On its face, the campaign appears to champion a noble cause: mobilizing animal lovers to protect shelter pets. However, critics argue that this strategy prioritizes public pressure and fundraising over sustainable solutions.

These campaigns are not new. Observers note that Best Friends has employed similar tactics in other communities to sway public opinion and push city officials toward adopting their policies. While positioning themselves as the champions of shelter reform, critics contend that Best Friends often sidesteps discussions of policy shortcomings and the unintended consequences of their approach. The result is not only increased division within communities but also a significant influx of donations from well-intentioned supporters who may not be aware of the broader implications.

Best Friends: Pulling the Strings of Manipulation

Follow the Money

One of the most troubling aspects of Best Friends’ public “shame” campaigns is their underlying fundraising strategy. These petitions, often presented as urgent calls to action, function as powerful funnels for aggressive fundraising. By crafting a crisis narrative, Best Friends taps into the public’s emotional response to animal suffering, turning every click, signature, and share into a donor pipeline. Their advocacy tactics—designed to create a sense of immediate and solvable crisis—align seamlessly with their financial objectives, ensuring a steady flow of donations. Well-meaning animal lovers, believing they’re helping a local cause, unwittingly contribute to a system that may not be serving their community’s best interests.

This raises serious ethical questions: Are the funds raised genuinely benefiting Los Angeles’ animals, or are they being diverted to support Best Friends’ national operations, administrative overhead, or unrelated programs? The lack of transparency leaves Angelenos with few answers, creating a troubling disconnect between donations and their intended purpose.

A Cautionary Tale for All Communities

The experiences of many cities illustrate the risks and unintended consequences that can accompany Best Friends’ push for a “90% save rate” over sustainable, community-centered solutions.

In Danville, Best Friends’ involvement reportedly strained relationships between the local shelter and city council, raising concerns about the pressures placed on communities to comply with lofty goals set by a wealthy, distant, national nonprofit.

In El Paso, Best Friends’ embed program—which positions their staff within shelters to drive “transformative” changes—ended in controversy. Critics claim the program resulted in increased pet abandonment and rising public safety risks, ultimately leading to the termination of their contract. Today, El Paso is grappling with a surge of stray animals that have stretched local resources thin. As Ron Comeau, director of Lucy’s Dream Rescue, observed, “It’s going to take El Paso years to recover from Best Friends’ programs.”

In Arizona, the management team of the Humane Society of Southern Arizona (HSSA), which included an employee embedded by Best Friends, allegedly advised the Douglas shelter to increase its live release rate by reclassifying adoptable cats and kittens as 'return-to-field community cats' and releasing them into the harsh Arizona desert—an environment where their survival was highly unlikely. This practice was reportedly approved by the Best Friends-embedded employee, understandably drawing criticism for raising serious ethical concerns and jeopardizing animal welfare.

San Antonio provides another cautionary example. Best Friends’ policies reportedly contributed to a federal lawsuit after a tragic incident involving dangerous dogs. The case underscored the potential dangers of prioritizing shelter depopulation over community safety, leaving local officials to navigate the fallout.

Even in Los Angeles, during Best Friends’ management of the Mission Hills shelter (2016–2019), multiple lawsuits were filed in connection with dog attacks. One notable case involved a pit bull named Bleu, who severely injured a young girl and required her to undergo reconstructive surgery. The ensuing lawsuit alleged that Best Friends knowingly placed a dangerous dog into an adoptive home, exposing troubling gaps in their adoption practices and professional judgment.

These few examples reveal a recurring pattern: while Best Friends touts ambitious goals, critics contend that communities are often left to deal with the unintended consequences—strained resources, public safety risks, and policies that may ultimately fail the animals they intend to protect.

The Dangerous Reality of No-Kill at Any Cost

As these cautionary examples illustrate, Best Friends’ policies often come at a significant cost. Their “no-kill” philosophy, while sounding undeniably humane, frequently prioritizes statistics over true animal welfare. Managed intake, inflated live-release rates, and a de-prioritization of spay/neuter services have led to overcrowded shelters, compromised public safety, and the release of dangerous animals back into communities.

Paulette Dean, executive director of the Danville Area Humane Society, warned of these risks: “Best Friends’ approach was not only ineffective, but it could lead to more suffering and death for the animals.”

Now, Los Angeles faces similar concerns. Kristen Hassen, a Best Friends protégé and current consultant for LA Animal Services (LAAS), is introducing policies that critics claim mirror the same flawed strategies seen in other communities. Fairfax County, where Hassen developed her “proven” policies, still struggles with the consequences. A 2016 memorandum from Master Animal Control Officer Forrest Higginbotham to Captain Anthony Matos, Commander of the local police department, was the first recorded warning that Hassen’s policies prioritized statistical targets over public safety. The memo outlined how her relentless push for higher live-release rates resulted in potentially dangerous animals being placed into homes, endangering both the public and the animals themselves.

If city officials capitulate to Best Friends’ shaming campaign, especially while Hassen remains embedded in LAAS, Los Angeles risks becoming yet another cautionary tale. Policies designed to create the illusion of success could lead to manipulated statistics, worsening shelter conditions, and a community forced to endure the consequences of reckless decisions. These predictable outcomes reveal systemic failures and raise pressing ethical questions about whether Best Friends prioritizes sustainable reform or serves its own interests.

Ethical Concerns in Policy and Funding

If sustainable reform is truly the goal, why has Best Friends deprioritized spay/neuter—the most effective strategy for reducing shelter intake? This shift raises serious ethical questions about their commitment to tackling the root causes of overpopulation. Spay/neuter programs are widely regarded as the cornerstone of humane population control. Yet, by sidelining these initiatives, Best Friends appears to prioritize short-term metrics, like adoption rates and fundraising, over meaningful, long-term solutions.

This approach perpetuates a cycle of shelter crises, fueling emotionally charged fundraising appeals that rely on a narrative of never-ending need. Such tactics invite critical scrutiny: Do Best Friends’ funding priorities truly align with their stated mission, or do they reflect a strategy designed to sustain a crisis-driven fundraising model?

An independent audit could help determine whether these funding decisions stem from practical challenges or reflect deeper organizational priorities that undermine meaningful progress in animal welfare. By holding Best Friends accountable for their financial and policy choices, Los Angeles can set a precedent for transparency and ethical leadership in animal welfare.

A Call for Accountability

Angelenos deserve the truth—not marketing spin wrapped in emotionally charged appeals and petitions. While Best Friends’ narratives may inspire compassion, their actions reveal a troubling pattern: prioritizing appearances and financial gain over genuine animal welfare.

True progress demands transparency, ethical leadership, and solutions that balance compassion with public safety. City leaders must reject coercive tactics and prioritize sustainable reforms that address the root causes of shelter crises.

The people of Los Angeles must demand accountability—not just from elected officials but from organizations that claim to champion animal welfare. Before signing a petition or clicking ‘donate,’ ask yourself: Does their narrative genuinely save lives—or merely spin the illusion of altruism to mask self-serving motives?

Ed Boks is a former Executive Director of the New York City, Los Angeles, and Maricopa County Animal Care & Control Departments, and a former Board Director of the National Animal Control Association. His work has been published in the LA Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Real Clear Policy, Sentient Media, and now on Animal Politics with Ed Boks.