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Dog Poop Left in Tree Pits Plaguing Hell's Kitchen Street, Neighbors Say

By Maya Rajamani | June 3, 2016 11:51am | Updated on June 6, 2016 8:55am
 The manager at The Colour Box has wrapped netting around the tree pits in front of her business to keep the dog owners from placing their dog inside.
The manager at The Colour Box has wrapped netting around the tree pits in front of her business to keep the dog owners from placing their dog inside.
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DNAinfo/Maya Rajamani

HELL'S KITCHEN — That stinks.

A pair of dog walkers have unleashed the ire of workers on West 54th Street who claim the two let their pets poop inside tree pits without picking up the waste.

A manager at The Colour Box hair salon at 453 W. 54th St., between Ninth and 10th avenues, told police a woman “constantly” walks her dog past the salon, places the dog in the garden pits outside the shop to do its business and doesn’t scoop up the droppings.

“She’s just a menace,” said the manager, who filed a harassment report with the NYPD but declined to give her name to a reporter for fear of retribution.

“We’ve asked her nicely, 'Please, don’t put your dog in the tree pit,' and she goes off on us,” she added, noting the poop problem has persisted “for a couple months."

When the salon staffer asked the dog walker to stop, the woman and her boyfriend filed a police report of their own, she said.

“They don’t like being caught doing something that’s A.) illegal and B.) the wrong thing to do,” she said.

The Colour Box is not the only site on the street that has been dogged by the problem.

“It's really getting out of line,” said the building superintendent at 454 W. 54th St., who also declined to provide his name because of arguments he's had with another dog walker who regularly leaves the stinky stuff behind. “It’s not one or two times — this has been going on for a month-and-a-half or two."

The super noted that he has had several run-ins with the male dog owner, who lets his dog defecate in the garden pits in front of the building, which sits across the street from the salon.

When the worker confronted the man, the dog owner cursed at him, called police and filed a police report against him, the super explained.

The super responded by filing his own report against the man, he said.

“The sign says, ‘Please curb your dog’ — it doesn’t say, 'Curb your dog in the tree pits,'” he said.

“Next Monday, we’re planning to plant flowers in the tree pits. I can’t stay quiet and not tell him not to do this.”

The Colour Box manager said she wished the dog owners would “smarten up and get with the program," and she recently wrapped netting around the tree pits in front of her business to keep the dog out.

“We live here together,” she said. “We all have to get along.”