Check out a special sneak peek of next week's Creative Loafing cover story, an investigative piece by Alex Pickett about former employees' allegations of problems at the Lowry Park Zoo. Here is an excerpt:
The last four years had been good for Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo.
Attendance steadily climbed each year as new attractions were unveiled.
Hundreds of thousands of adults and children entered the zoo to catch a
glimpse of a baby elephant or orangutan.
But away from the gawking tourists and excited schoolchildren, some
zoo employees were having a markedly different experience. Zookeepers
Brian Czarnik and Carie Peterson complained of deteriorating and warped
doors on the night houses, and overworked employees. Outreach education
specialist Coleen Kremer felt the zoo was drifting away from its
commitment to animal welfare. Security guard Jeff Kremer (Coleen's
husband) repeatedly noticed maintenance problems and security issues
unresolved for months. His supervisor Richard Justice, manager of
security, became increasingly frustrated that his own supervisors were
not listening to his pleas for better training and updated security and
safety measures.
By July, they had all left the zoo. Frustrated by the lack of media coverage of these problems, Czarnik met with a Creative Loafing reporter to explain the dangers he saw facing the zoo, its employees and animals.
"It's an insane work environment," he said the night of Aug. 21. "Something bad is going to happen."
The next day, it did.
Read the entire piece here and catch it on newsstands starting next Wednesday.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2006.