Rat War Gets Personal for Mayor Eric Adams at Hearing to Challenge Rodent Rights Violations

Every mayor of New York in history has fought rats. But for current Mayor Eric Adams, the pest war has taken a peculiar turn as he tries to polish his image as the city’s top exterminator.

On Thursday, Adams appeared before a bailiff – for the second time – to contest two fines he received from his own health department for allegedly allowing rodent broods to settle in his Brooklyn townhouse.

Participating by telephone, Adams disputed the inspector’s findings of finding rat holes along the fence line and “fresh rat droppings” in front of the mayor’s trash cans.

City officials issued the subpoena on Dec. 7, just a day after another bailiff dismissed an earlier $300 fine for failing to control the rat population in the same property. Each of the new tickets may also carry a fine of $300 or more.

The mayor, who usually prides himself on being a bit “snobby” during his public appearances, was reserved and respectful during the hearings.

Adams denied having a rat problem. According to him, his own inspections of his property did not reveal signs of the presence of rodents. Adams said he pays the exterminator monthly and spent $7,000 a year ago to keep the property free of rodents. At one point during the half-hour hearing, the mayor could be heard searching through his electronic files for receipts and other documents needed to substantiate his case.

Adams, a Democrat, also assured the bailiff that his residents were following the city’s garbage and recycling regulations.

“We all don’t like rats and we all cooperate,” Adams said.

A handful of reporters listened as the mayor seemed to express surprise at the latest quotes, saying that some of the alleged violations observed were actually on his neighbor’s property.

The I-Team calculated the numbers and confirmed what for a while scared New Yorkers away: Mayor Eric Adams may have declared war on rats, but in fact, the scale of the rodent problem has doubled in just 12 months. Chris Glorioso says

City records show that Adams received at least 18 subpoenas to his Brooklyn address over the years, many of them related to garbage collection. Many times he just paid fines, but not this time.

The judge told Adams that she would decide within 30 days whether to impose any fines.

In his first year in office, Adams began fighting guns and homelessness, and rats have also proven to be a nuisance to the mayor, who is currently interviewing candidates for the new director of rodent control, a title immediately dubbed “king of rats.”

Before becoming mayor, Adams, as president of the Brooklyn borough, was known for his dislike of rats. His stomach is known to have twisted when he demonstrated to reporters a trap that used a bucket filled with vinegar poisonous soup to drown rats attracted by the smell of food.

The trap was not very effective, like all the other attempts of previous mayors to destroy the rat population in the city.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio has spent tens of millions of dollars in efforts to reduce the rat population in targeted areas through more frequent garbage collection, more aggressive home inspections and replacing dirty basement floors with concrete.

This comes after officials passed legislation in an attempt to mitigate the problem of rats across the city, according to Andrew Siff.

In a previous attempt that turned out to be more amusing than deadly, city officials unveiled a scheme to use dry ice to suffocate rats in their burrows, but drew laughter when workers pursued—but never caught—one of the fleeing vermin.

Adams held press conferences to periodically mourn rodents as a scourge of New York society.

“Let’s be clear: I hate rats and we have too many of them and we should get rid of them,” he said in June when announcing the city’s proposed spending plan.

In November, he signed a series of laws aimed at reducing the city’s rat problem, including new rules limiting the amount of time trash can sit on curbs and establishing what the city calls “rat control zones.”

Shortly thereafter, he began looking for the rat king, who, according to the job description, was supposed to be “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty.”