The deplorable conditions that used to exist at Detroit Animal Control are just one particularly heart-wrenching example of Democrat incompetence, but can the PARTICULAR Democrat currently running for U.S. Senator from Michigan be credibly blamed for it?

Mere weeks before the midterms, Abdul El-Sayed is receiving a LOT of negative press regarding conditions at the Detroit animal shelter when he used to run it in his role as the director of the Detroit Health Department.

In 2015, Detroit Animal Control Officer Brittany Roberts filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the animals in this facility were mistreated, neglected, and kept in filthy conditions with inadequate food and medical care, and that many of them them died in their cages as a result of these conditions rather than being properly euthanized.

I was almost embarrassed with myself to be part of a team that played a role [in] the death of so many dogs in their cages. Every morning, we’d just walk around and see who was alive before we could even feed. – Brittany Roberts

As a dog-lover ( I have two precious fur babies of my own), this makes my blood boil.  I’m also no fan of El-Sayed or the rest of his Islamo-Commie ilk who are threatening to destroy my country as they have so many others. However, the more I look into this, the more I wonder if this animal cruelty debacle is something we can credibly pin on him. I play a game of devil’s advocate with myself sometimes to find potential bias on my part or holes in my logic, so here goes:

The Case Against Blaming El-Sayed

I’ve been known to visit Snopes in an effort to get the other side of the story, and they provide the following timeline:

– 2015 euthanasia rates for Detroit Animal Control are 74%, as reported by The Detroit News.

– August 2015: El-Sayed is appointed Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department.

– October 2015: Brittany Roberts files her lawsuit.

– Two days later, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announces that the Health Department is taking over Animal Control from the Police Department.

– December 2015: El-Sayed replaces Animal Control Director Harry Ward with Melissa Miller.

– 2017: Annual shelter reports submitted to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development show the euthanasia rate is down to 35% and El-Sayed resigns from the Health Department to run for governor.

If this is accurate, I’m forced to allow El-Sayed the same defense I always give when people complain that Trump isn’t fixing everything quickly enough to suit them: It takes more than a few months  to clean up a mess that took years to make.

The Case for Blaming El-Sayed

But not so fast!  Apparently, the city of Detroit isn’t being super transparent about all of its Animal Control statistics during El-Sayed’s tenure. They failed to report their 2016 statistics, so Judicial Watch is suing the city of Detroit for their Animal Control euthanasia records after it failed to respond to an August 14, 2026 FOIA request.

@spencerpratt And El-Sayed was in charge of an animal shelter that euthanized 1000s of dogs… WTH… this guy is a monster‼️

— (@nomandatesco) October 15, 2026

There’s also the matter of Hannah Sanders, reporter from a local Detroit news station, who posted at the time that, not only had El-Sayed refused to do an on-camera interview with her regarding the animal control controversy, but he’d also asked her in a tweet to avoid covering the protests that were erupting in response to the deplorable conditions in the shelter.

Could you please avoid it? It’s already reeling and cameras are killing the team’s morale.  -Abdul El-Sayed

Was El-Sayed’s reluctance to get in front of a camera to defend his handling of the shelter and his discouraging of local news to cover it merely an effort to protect his embattled employees, as he claimed, or was it a classic case of CYA from a political climber? Judicial Watch usually doesn’t waste its time requesting records if they haven’t smelled some heavy smoke, so we’ll see.

Feature Image: Dog photo/Neon Tommy/Flickr/License CC BY-SA 2.0