Rats!

You might have heard about last week's rat attack at a KFC/Taco Bell down in Greenwich village at 6th Ave. and 4th St. A Fox 5 TV news crew was in the area and saw a horde of rats scurrying around the fast food joint, picking up scraps on the floor and hanging out on the trashcans. For those that get nervous around the little furry creatures, the scene would have sent you running.

What made the story even worse and subsequently gain more attention in the local and even national news (and YouTubed) was that the store was inspected by the health department the day before. The report gave the store good marks with no signs of vermin. The establishment had been cited previously, four times in the last three years but conditions show that there hasn't been much change here. Perhaps rats like the combination of pizza and tacos...but I have seen them eat far worse between the rails in the subway stations.

New York is supposed to have high standards when it comes to restaurant cleanliness (or so they say), so how did they stack up in the inspection:

The city’s health department issues violation points for unsanitary conditions found in New York’s 30,000 restaurants, cafeterias and other food-service sites. A failing grade is a score above 28 points. On Friday morning, a health inspector found 92 points worth of violations at the KFC/Taco Bell and ordered it closed because of rodent infestation, a health department spokesman said. The restaurant must pass a re-inspection.

The restaurant, it turns out, had passed inspections last year and even as recently as last week. On March 1, 2006, the restaurant was fined $1,300 for a number of violations, including fresh and stale mice droppings found on the floor, said the health department spokesman, Geoffrey Cowley. It was given a passing grade of 23 points. On Thursday, the day before the rats were broadcast live on television, an inspector went to the restaurant prompted by complaints to 311, Mr. Cowley said. Nine points of violations were found, and the restaurant was allowed to remain open.

Nine points of violations is bad enough for me but 92 is just outrageous. How does one restaurant go from 9 to 92 within a day? The company said that they were undergoing repairs in the basement. Mayor Bloomberg was also posed the question:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had this to say about the investigation at a news conference today at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice:

I can tell you what we’re doing. We are going and reinspecting any place that that particular investigator inspected. We are inspecting all of the places that that particular restaurant owner has. And we’re doing an investigation as to what happened in this case where, clearly, the investigation didn’t show rats and a day later, there were plenty.

Those are the three things we’re doing and I’m pleased to say that the report of rats in this city does seem to be on the decline, although every big city, as you know, has a vermin problem.

The mayor was asked if there was any suspicion of bribery or corruption involving the inspection. His response:

There is no reason at this time to suspect anything. We are going to do an investigation, which we always do in cases like this, where we don’t go in with any presuppositions, nor do we go in trying to hang somebody. We’re going go try get the facts and then see where that takes us. …

We’re going to make sure that anything that slipped through the cracks gets reinspected. That’s our first priority and then we’ll look and see what happened in this case, but as far as I can tell, we just don’t know at this point.

It will be interesting to find out how that problem occurred and how it will be fixed in the future. It is bad enough I have to deal with mice in my apartment from time to time, but a restaurant (even if it is a KFC/Taco Bell) should have higher standards than what was caught on the local news. To give the city some credit, they did suspend the un-named inspector today while the case is under review.