Inspector in Rat Scandal Tenders Her Resignation
By MATTHEW CHAYES,
A health department inspector who gave a passing grade to a Greenwich Village KFC/Taco Bell a day before a television news station broadcast video of rats scurrying around the restaurant resigned yesterday morning, the same day the city's independent watchdog agency recommended she be fired.
The inspector, Cemone Thomas, acknowledged to investigators that she forgot to tell her bosses about 20 rat droppings she saw during her initial inspection of the restaurant in February, the watchdog's report said.
"By underreporting her findings as 87 droppings as opposed to the at least 107 that she ultimately admitted to with us she thereby did not trigger what would likely have been a closing of the restaurant," Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn of the Department of Investigation said yesterday.
Ms. Thomas, whose official title was public health sanitarian, forgot about the extra rodent droppings because she was "thrown off" while she was chatting with a restaurant employee, the report said. Investigators found no evidence of bribery, but they did speculate on why she gave the restaurant a passing grade.
"Thomas' shoddy inspection may have been motivated by a desire to avoid the additional time it would have taken for further enforcement steps," the report said.
In addition to seeking the ousting of Ms. Thomas, investigators suggested the health department streamline its restaurant inspection unit by requiring restaurants that are cited but not shut down to post conspicuous notices publicizing their violations as well as to prove to the department that they are addressing the violations.
A restaurant lobbyist for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, Richard Lipsky, said the increased scrutiny of his membership since the rat video was broadcast is often "an opportunity to treat the restaurants of this city as cash piņatas."
"It's ironic that this inspector is being terminated for being underzealous when so many inspectors are out being overzealous in finding minutiae that has nothing to do with protecting public health," Mr. Lipsky said.
