MTA’s ruff justice
Asks riders: Rat out nonservice animals
If you see something, bark something.
MTA Chairman Joe Lhota on Wednesday asked riders to snitch on all nonservice dogs seen on the subways and not properly enclosed in a carrier.
“I encourage New Yorkers, if they see anything like that, to report it,” said Lhota.
The transit boss made the statement at the monthly agency board meeting a day after a video surfaced of a pit bull attacking a woman on a subway train.
The video, which was posted on the popular Instagram page Subway Creatures, shows the pit bull grabbing a seated woman’s foot and refusing to let go, even as several courageous fellow straphangers try to pull the dog away.
The pooch is already mid-chomp on the woman’s shoe when the video starts and the attack goes on for several more seconds as straphangers yell at the animal’s handler to control the dog. It wasn’t clear where or when the incident occurred.
“Get the dog off of her!” yells one woman.
“Call the police!” a man screams.
The train descends into chaos as riders try to get away from the dog. A man sitting next to the woman with her shoe in the dog’s mouth pulls hard on her leg to try to shake the beast off.
The dog finally lets go near the end of the video and the animal’s handler tries to get it back into a crate while other riders continue to scream at him.
“There’s no reason in the world why that dog was allowed on board, down to the platform, and on the train, let alone harassing one of my passengers,” Lhota told reporters.
“Our system is open to everyone. It is not open to people with dogs that aren’t service animals or enclosed.”
It is up to NYPD cops and MTA staff alike to be on the lookout for rogue pets, said Lhota.
A woman called into Brian Lehrer’s WNYC radio show last week to ask Mayor de Blasio why there were so many dogs loose on subway trains and why cops weren’t kicking them off. Hizzoner told the woman he would look into it.
MTA rules call for all nonservice animals to be kept in enclosed cases.
NYPD stats show that cops ticketed 85 straphangers for bringing improperly enclosed animals into the system last year. That’s down 28 percent from 119 in 2016.