There’s a new “Rat Pack” in town.
Mayor Eric Adams is asking for volunteers to join an “elite squad of dedicated anti-rat activists” named after the group of 1950s A-listers that included Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
Those who sign up for the “New York City Rat Pack” will be rewarded with flashy swag, including t-shirts and hats with a nifty rodent logo, Adams said during a Sunday event-turned-community-cleanup in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Adams has waged a multi-front war on rodents throughout his time as mayor, from finally requiring the city’s garbage be put in containers to appointing a “ rat czar” paid $170,000 a year.
The “Rat Pack” joins those campaigns via a three-step process to deputize New Yorkers into the fight: attend a Department of Health “Rat Academy” teaching safe and effective rat prevention methods, join a “rat walk” detailing the rodents’ lives in the city and, finally, participating in or hosting an event that supports clean and rat-free conditions.
The branded merch that comes with becoming part of the “Rat Pack” drew the eyes of some New Yorkers, including Aminat, a 59-year-old Brooklynite.
“The shirt is nice, but I wouldn’t do it for the shirt,” she told The Post Monday. “I would do it because I live here.”
But not everyone was clawing at the chance to become part of the pest-fighting crew.
Wilson Cheng, who has lived in Sunset Park for 15 years, said the neighborhood is already doing its part cleaning up garbage, only to see the city’s sanitation department not pick up the trash piles beloved by rats.
“It’s not our society that is the problem, it’s that they don’t pick it up,” Cheng said. “Sometimes we have garbage out and 2 weeks they don’t pick it up. We have to take it back inside.”
Others were more inclined toward the vocally rat-hating mayor’s vision.
“If everyone does a little bit of something, we can keep the city a little more clean,” said Maria Sldana, who has lived in Brooklyn for 38 years.
Sldana spoke to The Post in Sunset Park, where dozens of trash bags were laid out near 44th Street and Sixth Avenue.
“I’ve lived here for 38 years and I’ve never seen the city so dirty,” she said, adding that she would volunteer because she can’t take it anymore.
The rodent-repelling initiative also garnered tentative support from a perhaps-surprising source: PETA.
Ashley Byrne, the outspoken animal rights group’s director of outreach and communications, who lives in New York, said the program appears to focused on non-lethal, humane preventative measures such as neighborhood cleanups.
“We are absolutely in favor that because it’s prevention, instead of slaughter, that will be solution to concerns that New York will be flooded by rats,” she said.
“However, I will say this, we do wish the mayor would stop demonizing rats and instead take aim at the disgusting people who throw trash on the city’s streets and subway tracks.”
