Doo the right thing, Manhattan.
Putrid piles of dog poo have been increasingly plaguing the city’s priciest borough since 2022, skidding to an all-time high in February, a disgusting new analysis found.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal dropped the study Friday as Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council members howled about the SCOOP Act — a package of bills taking aim at the city’s dog feces free-for-all.
Big Apple dog owners simply have to do better at picking up their big dog crap piles — with a helping hand from the city, the borough prez said.
“This crap has to stop,” Hoylman-Sigal said in a statement.
“For far too long, Manhattanites have suffered from increasing levels of dog waste on their streets, and today we know the city must take action.”
The scatological study delved into 311 calls about canine Tootsie Rolls across Manhattan, finding nearly 1,700 complaints since January 2024.
The number represents 0.1% of all 311 calls over Manhattan and is almost certainly an undercount, given that “most people who step around a pile on the sidewalk don’t reach for their phone,” the study states.
But the results revealed poo patterns, notably that complaints over dogs’ waste peak every February and March.
February this year logged the single most complaints — 308 — out of any month, doubling the record set during the same month in 2025, the study found.
The spike was so big that Hoylman-Sigal’s excrement researchers widened their analysis to scoop up complaints going back to January 2020 — and confirmed the month set a record.
The February fecal finding isn’t necessary a surprise — that month the city was buried under a foot of snow, forcing New Yorkers to dodge dung left behind by inconsiderate dog owners.
Dog waste complaints rose nearly 100% citywide during that time, with streets in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and Manhattan’s Washington Heights logging the most calls, The Post previously reported.
The study also compared poop complaints in the 12 community boards representing Manhattan’s neighborhoods, assigning each a letter grade for cleanliness — and, sure enough, found Washington Heights fared the worst.
Community Board 12 covering Washington Heights and Inwood scored a D, with a dog poop rate 17.3 times higher than the cleanest neighborhoods, which were downtown.
Other Uptown boards covering central and East Harlem received C grades, with the study noting that those areas mostly have fewer trash baskets and no poop bag dispensers.
Blocks with less public trash cans have dog poop complaint rates almost three times higher than blocks with good public trash coverage, the study found.
And only 25 dog poop bag dispensers are still in service across all of Manhattan, even though the borough had about 200 bag dispensers installed in 2018, according to the study.
“It is particularly outrageous that despite Upper Manhattan having the highest rate of dog waste 311 complaints, there are zero dog waste bag dispensers available for the community’s use,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “This status quo is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue.”
The study comes as council members push their SCOOP package, which includes measures requiring dog poop bag dispensers to be installed next to every public litter basket and send sanitation workers to clean up if at least three dog poop complaints are made on the same block.
Read the full article here
