[Mr. K]

the price has to be high enough

at $10 a rate maybe?

The cost SAVINGS from eliminating desease and destruction would be worth it

FREE rat poison provided, free cages... I dunno

Set free enterprise loose and you will sovle the problem

[EinNYC]

You wouldn't want to hand out free rat poison, especially in that neighborhood. They no speak English in many cases and probably could not understand the directions. Rat poison is best handled by professionals only. It has also killed many beneficial animals such as redtailed hawks in the city, who eat a poisoned rat and then die. That's how Pale Male, the famous 5th Avenue redtail, lost a couple of his mates and some of his offspring. You want these natural predators at work killing rats, not dead from poison.

As I said before, this is a highly urban area, not like some cornfield out in the middle of Podunk. You can't encourage kids to use BB guns to kill the rats because they don't have BB guns, they have real ones--this neighborhood is a Hispanic gang location. The entire park is a tiny speck of green. A bullet's trajectory would probably exceed the length of this park. You certainly don't want people taking potshots at rats and missing, hitting someone's kid or ricocheting off one of the nearby steel supportive posts for the elevated subway line adjacent to the park.

Eliminate the garbage tossed into the street, the nearby overflowing dumpsters and trash receptacles and the rats go elsewhere.