A fight over a pet shelter gets ugly. Lawsuit claims slander by Miami-Dade director

The rift between the director of Miami-Dade County’s pet shelter and a top benefactor has gone to court, with allegations of slander and claims of a whisper campaign to muffle criticism of the county agency.

Yolanda Berkowitz, a founder of the Friends of Miami Animals Foundation, is a well-known foe of Bronwyn Stanford, the county’s Animal Services director, whose tenure Berkowitz called “catastrophic” in an email to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava last year.

Now Berkowitz is suing Stanford in Miami-Dade Circuit Court and alleging she told shelter staff explosive lies about Berkowitz’s past. Among the alleged lies: Stanford told a shelter employee “Berkowitz had been a stripper,” and told another Animal Services employee that “Berkowitz was an escort.”

READ MORE: The COVID-19 pet rush has ended in Miami-Dade, and the shelter is crowded again

The latest version of the complaint, filed June 22, claims the whisper campaign went beyond Animal Services staff, too. Berkowitz alleges that in a 2022 telephone call with a an unnamed animal-welfare advocate, Stanford called her “a gold-digger” who married for money. Her husband of more than 20 years is Miami developer Jeffrey Berkowitz.

“Stanford’s statements that Berkowitz had been an escort and performed sex for money...maligned Berkowitz’s good name and reputation,” the suit read.

Stanford denied the allegations in a county response to the suit.

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“This malicious and absurd attack is hurtful and damaging to Yolanda, her husband and her entire family,” Yolanda Berkowitz’s attorney, Hank Adorno, said in a statement Friday. “Yolanda has dedicated more than 20 years of her life to the Guardian ad Litem program, serves on the national board of the Humane Society, founded an animal services group and has been a leader in organizations like United Way and The Miami Foundation. We also question why the administration and the county attorney’s office are defending Ms. Stanford’s inappropriate behavior at taxpayers’ expense.”

Neither Stanford nor a spokesperson for Levine Cava responded to a request for comment Wednesday.

Stanford, a former prosecutor and administrator in Florida’s child-services department, came to Miami-Dade in November 2021 to work as Animal Services director under Levine Cava.

She’s faced record high dog populations at Miami-Dade’s Doral shelter amid a surge in strays across the country following a drop in pet sterilization procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In her suit, Berkowitz amplified past complaints that Stanford resisted her help to ease shelter crowding.

She claimed an Animal Services staffer helping Berkowitz with the “Operation Pit Stop” adoption drive was yanked from the project and that Stanford mockingly misstated the project’s initials in an email as “POS” in an attempt to “embarrass Berkowitz.” The suit also describes Berkowitz’s efforts to convince Levine Cava that Stanford isn’t doing a good job as her director.

While Stanford hasn’t responded to the specific allegations in the suit, she’s described herself as eager for collaboration with community groups. She also said she’s streamlined Animal Services paperwork to make it easier for volunteers to help there.

“I’ll partner with anyone. I go out in the community,” she said in an interview last year. “I’m always up for listening to people’s ideas and solutions.”

This story was updated on Friday, July 14, 2023, to include a statement from Yolanda Berkowitz’s attorney.

This story was originally published July 12, 2023 at 2:17 PM.