New York City is on target for a record year of rat complaints to a municipal hotline, besting over 24,000 calls last year.
“They’re multiplying too fast for the city to do anything about it. They could take over if they wanted to — it’s sickening,” Harlem resident Derrick Jefferson tells the AP.
Health inspectors are targeting neighborhoods in Manhattan and the Bronx with “comprehensive assessments for rat activity” and assigning dedicated case managers to work with each neighborhood on “outreach and education.”
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer — the self-appointed “rat czar” — says there is a rat crisis in the city.
“We need the department of health to get their act together. We need better protocols, more accountability because rats are a real health issue,” he says.
Caroline Bragdon, the city’s “resident rat expert,” blames last year’s massive snow falls. She says trash piled up on the sidewalks while garbage trucks were diverted from normal routes to act as snow plows.
She now commands an inspection team of nearly 50 workers who inspect “dozens” of buildings each month.
This writer just returned from the Big Apple and observed Manhattan being dirtier than I’d ever seen it: grimy sidewalks, standing garbage and refuse everywhere. It’s no wonder rat populations are booming when cleanliness doesn’t appear to be a priority for the de Blasio administration.
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