Results tagged “surge”

East Village residents packed a community forum Wednesday night to vent about a surge in the local rat population. City Councilmember Rosie Mendez, who co-hosted the meeting, declared that rats were "the largest growing population in the East Village." And Community Board 3 manager Susan Stetzer deemed the rat boom a "crisis...This year we didn’t even have the little Halloween parade in Tompkins Square Park for the kids because of all the rats." According to the Villager, Rick Simeone, director of pest-control services for the Health Department, says they stopped putting poison in the park due to concerns that hawks, squirrels or dogs would eat it. Instead, the city is promising to crack down on bars and restaurants who don't manage their trash properly. Meanwhile, gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods are crawling with rats, too!

"People have seen them sitting on benches," says Andrew Albert, an MTA board member and chair of the NYC Transit Riders Council. "From what riders have told us, they appear to be getting bolder." That's the subway rat population he's talking about, which many commuters say is surging, at least according to an amNY article that's teeming with great quotes. "Next thing you know the doors are going to open and one is going to come on the train with us," one exterminator predicts.

According to new NYPD statistics, graffiti complaints in Brooklyn rose 96% last year, with arrests in the borough increasing by 33%. Citywide, complaints almost doubled from 4,886 in 2006 to 8,866 in 2007, and total arrests rose from 2,962 to 3,786. Williamsburg leads the tagging trend with a total of 186 complaints.