Group Calls for Investigation Into Apparent Conflict of Interest After Officials Turn a Blind Eye to Illegal Chaining of Elephants
For Immediate Release:
March 28, 2012
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Washington -- PETA has sent a formal complaint to the District of Columbia Office of Campaign Finance calling on the agency to launch an investigation into the Executive Office of the Mayor for accepting hundreds of discounted ticket vouchers in 2011 from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which keeps elephants nearly immobilized in chains in direct violation of D.C. law.
For the past two years, PETA has notified the mayor's office that Ringling shackles elephants by two legs—denying the animals the opportunity to take more than one step in any direction and forcing them to urinate and defecate in the same area in which they must stand. D.C. law specifies that elephants may not be cruelly tethered in such a way. The office's acceptance of a gift of discounted circus ticket vouchers violates D.C.'s conflict-of-interest law, which states that public officials shall not take anything of value when it could be inferred that it might influence the discharge of that official's duties. The D.C. Department of Health has refused to intervene to stop Ringling's violations of D.C. animal-care laws for two consecutive years.
"The mayor's office gets cheap circus tickets while the elephants pay the price," says PETA Foundation Director Delcianna Winders. "We're calling on the mayor to carry out his sworn duty to enforce Washington's laws—including the ones that protect elephants from being kept chained up like bicycles."
The last time that Ringling headed to D.C., PETA and scores of local citizens called on Mayor Vincent Gray to enforce district law and prevent the circus from chaining elephants backstage at the Verizon Center at night—a practice that the district's Department of Health acknowledged that Ringling admitted to. But neither the mayor nor the Department of Health did anything to stop Ringling from keeping elephants chained by two legs, making it impossible for them to move around—conduct prohibited by D.C. law.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.