We’ve all heard of NYC’s public battle with rats, but the city is losing a pretty gross battle that doesn’t revolve around rodents: dog poop.
New Yorkers who decline to pick up their dog’s dropping or clean up can be fined $250, but it is a rarely enforced rule. City data shows only 18 tickets were issued in 2022 for “failure to pick up canine waste.” 72 tickets were issued in 2019. Clearly it is not happening just 18 times a year, and the city is worse for it.
And that decline in tickets comes as dog licenses in the city skyrocketed due to the pandemic, and an estimated 74 tons a day of feces from those dogs.
“We don’t have an effective strategy [for dog poop],” Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a city council meeting earlier in March. “It’s certainly not for a lack of trying. “When our enforcement stopped someone for that violation, oftentimes the person will say they’re not carrying their ID. And then do you really want to bring them into the precinct for it? I mean, our policy has been no.”
Tisch said the Department of Sanitation plans to kickstart a campaign to remind New Yorkers to pick up after their canines.
New York City implemented its pooper scooper law in 1978 and was a trendsetter in that regard. But decades later, it’s easy to dodge tickets.
Enforcement and education are paramount to poop-free sidewalks, said Councilmember Erik Bottcher. He launched a campaign of his own last year in his district on Manhattan’s West Side that boasts signs that read “There is no poop fairy.”
But wouldn’t it be great if there was one?
