New York mayor fined for rat infestation despite pledging to quash city’s rodent problem

Eric Adams, the New York mayor who has made fighting the city's rat problem a top priority, has been fined for a rodent infestation at one of his Brooklyn properties.

Mr Adams appeared virtually in a court hearing this week to contest a $300 (£245) fine issued by his own administration over health code violation stemming from a rodent infestation at the property in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

After Mr Adams failed to respond to the initial rat summons, he was found in violation by default.

Mr Adams, who was forced to appear after failing to respond to the initial summons then repeatedly missing his court dates, argued in his defence that he had spent nearly $7,000 (£5,700) on trying to rid the brownstone of the pests.

His spokesman, Fabien Levy, said in a statement: “Mayor Adams has made no secret of the fact that he hates rats – whether scurrying around on the streets or terrorising building tenants.

“He spent thousands of dollars to remediate an infestation at his residence in Brooklyn earlier this year, and was happy to appear before OATH (Office of Administrative Trials and Hearing) today to state as much.”

The hearing officer said he would consider the evidence and return a verdict within 30 days.

During his run for mayor, Mr Adams, 62, told The New York Post that his childhood home was so overrun by rats that he and his siblings decided to keep one as a pet.

The Democratic mayor, a former police officer, has repeatedly reiterated his abhorrence of the city’s ubiquitous rats, recently launching a concerted effort to rid the streets of its furry inhabitants.

Mr Adams and Jessica Tisch, his new Sanitation Commissioner, announced in October they were limiting the number of hours residential and commercial rubbish can sit on the street before being picked up to prevent what they depicted as an “all-night, all-you-can-eat rat buffet”.

“The rats don’t run this city,” the commissioner said at the time, “we do”.

More recently, City Hall said it was recruiting a new “director of rodent mitigation” to tackle the issue.

The job listing indicates the city is looking for a so-called “rat tsar” who is “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty” with a “swashbuckling attitude, crafty humour, and general aura of bad assery”.