The prosecution of the case, which has dragged on for months and could take more than a year to resolve, is unfolding amid the county’s plan to build an $8.3 million shelter, efforts by Rockland Green (the former Rockland County Solid Waste Authority) to take over the shelter’s operations, and the county’s upcoming need to renegotiate its contracts with the towns, which expire this year. In January, DiBernardo, 51, was indicted by a Rockland County Grand Jury for offering a false instrument for filing in the 1st Degree and 17 counts of falsifying business records in the 2nd Degree (17 Counts). Further, donations in the first quarter of 2022 are down nearly eight percent over first quarter donations from the same period last year sliding from $74,000 to $68,000. They don’t want to be dragged through the mud.”ĭiBernardo said adoptions in first quarter 2022 have dropped compared to the first quarter 2021 from 148 to 95, a 35 percent decrease.
“They’re not interested in doing partnerships. “People don’t call us back,” said DiBernardo. But the immediate and ongoing impact of one felony charge and seventeen misdemeanors (one for each kitten processed) has enveloped the shelter in a dark cloud, hurting its ability to raise funds, recruit volunteers, hold onto its personnel, and most importantly, adopt out animals.
The facts of the day can and will be disputed if, and when this case goes to trial. Over time, innumerable entries were made on reports logging the intake of animals without becoming the subject of a legal tangle.īut one day in June 2020, a dispute over the paper processing of a clowder of seventeen felines became the focus of a criminal indictment against DiBernardo by the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office following a three-month investigation of the shelter’s operations. Under the direction of Hi-Tor Animal Care Shelter’s board president Debbie DiBernardo for the past seven years, the Pomona facility has processed thousands of abandoned kittens who were treated medically, sheltered, and mostly adopted to county residents and beyond. Criminal Charge For Paper Error Hurting Hi-Tor’s Reputation, Ability to Recruit Volunteers, Fund Raise
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