Opinion

S#@* HAPPENED

On this, the 30th anniversary birthday of our famous “poop scoop” law, the first of its kind to work in a big city and model for communities around the world, what are we celebrating – besides the fact that we don’t have to scrape something off our shoes?

Probably the fact that Health Law 1310 happened at all. These days, picking up after a dog is such a normal part of daily life that many owners do it automatically. Dogged and dogless New Yorkers alike don’t want to remember a time, not long ago, when a common-sense solution to a mounting urban problem was neither popular nor the only answer. They’re still wincing over a civil war that divided people cleanly into pro-dog and anti-dog lobbies – with nothing in between.

But 1310 was also a new kind of law, a forebear of the sort of initiatives – particularly popular under Mayor Bloomberg – that, for good or ill, try to make us better people.

It was New York’s decline in the early 1970s that allowed the poop-scoop law to pass in the first place. More people owned dogs for protection, and strays ran through the boroughs. Alan Beck, the head of the Bureau of Animal Affairs, estimated that by 1975, there were 300,000 to 500,000 pounds of dog crap left on city pavements daily.

Had the city been, er, flush, it could have hired more sanitation workers to handle the problem. But New York was in the midst of a fiscal crisis, basic services were being scaled back, and street cleaners refused to do more dirty work.

When eyes turned to the owners, author Cleveland Amory and other animal rights advocates, along with humane organizations and shelters, united against a “pick it up yourself” proposal they considered harsh and unfair. In the long run, they predicted, the law would force people to abandon their loved ones, and would lead to an eventual ban on dogs. Sidewalks and public lawns weren’t worth preserving at any cost.

“Like the Jews of Nazi Germany,” said the head of New York’s Dog Owners Guild with typical understatement, “we citizens, including the old and the infirm, are being humiliated by being forced to pick up excrement from the gutter.”

A raucous hearing in 1972 led to a stalemate and citizens started taking matters into their own hands. Town meetings degenerated into shouting matches and the stuff didn’t just hit the fan – it was thrown at people.

On the pavement, walking a dog could be stressful and even violent. The simple pleasures of canine companionship were spoiled as paranoid pet owners looked over their shoulders for vigilantes, not always sure that someone would rise to their defense.

It took several years of bad community relations, and a no-nonsense mayor like Ed Koch, who went to the state level for support, before the fighting ended. But even in Albany there was strong resistance to the scoop. Not all the “nays” were given out of sympathy for people who’d gotten dogs for protection and companionship in a dangerous and alienating urban environment – though many leaders did think it was dehumanizing to force anyone to handle feces. The main concern was that similar laws had already been tried and failed in other places, and those opposed feared that yet another unenforceable decree would only encourage more disrespect for authority in general.

The irony is that they were right, at least about the unenforceable part. Health Law 1310, which eventually passed in August 1978, was tough to police and erratically used. It succeeded not because of fines (of which there weren’t huge numbers), but because the debate forced dog owners to take action.

Slowly but surely, owners learned that picking up wasn’t so bad. They started to believe that lending a helping hand would get New York back on its feet. The vast majority of dogs owners continue to comply, not because they have to – they never really did – but because they want to.

Cleaning up a dog’s mess had become, as Parks Commissioner Henry Stern rejoiced, “a respectable and honorable act.”

No doubt Bloomberg noted the poop-scoop law’s achievement when he proposed his smoking ban. Like 1310, the amazing success of anti-smoking legislation has more to do with peer pressure than police officers handing out tickets. But the simple act of legislating antisocial behavior shamed people into compliance.

If there are downsides to 1310, it’s when legislators take the precedent too far. In the case of the poop-scoop law itself, there are calls to increase the fines – proposed by of all people Sen. Frank Pavadan, who opposed the original legislation – and video surveillance of dog walkers in Brooklyn and the Bronx. These measures are insulting and a waste of taxpayers’ money. Picking up dog waste makes our lives better, but tracking those who don’t do it like terrorists is draconian.

Then there are the other laws to “make our lives better,” to get us to eat less fat and count our calories and maybe exercise a little. We can all perhaps agree on limiting the amount of noise in our neighborhood, but should we ticket a crying child? Air conditioners are wasteful, but can we legislate people to limit their use? Is your stroller too wide? Do you smell on the subway? There’s a line between improving our lives and meddling with them.

But as long as we’re vigilant about that boundary, it’s hard to argue that Health 1310 wasn’t a law that changed New York for the better – and proved we’re a little nicer than people give us credit for. It cleared the air in more ways than one.

Michael Brandow is the author of “New York’s Poop Scoop Law: Dogs, the Dirt and Due Process” (Purdue University Press).