Ed Koch Wanted Wild Wolves To Stop Subway Graffiti Taggers??

Subway car covered in graffiti in the 1980s (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

When former Mayor Ed Koch entered City Hall in the late 1970s, there was rampant graffiti in the subway system. In 1981, Koch announced the use of guard dogs at train yards to deter would-be taggers—but he had actually wanted wild wolves.

In an interview with La Guardia and Wagner Archives, Koch outlined his plan for putting wild wolves to help subway cleanliness:

"Put in wolves because there's no reported case of a wolf in the wild state ever attacking a human being in North America—it's happened elsewhere, but not in North America... "Now I tell this story to the reporters and Clyde Haberman comes in the next day and says, 'I checked your story in the library and I found it's not totally true.'.. .He said that it is true that no wolf in the wild has attacked a human being in North America but domesticated wolves that people have have attacked. But I was only talking about wild wolves, I wasn't talking about domesticated wolves. My position is if you put the wolf in and after a certain period of time he becomes domesticated, you replace him! You bring in a wild one!"

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