Safety Analysis
NYC Logged 34,033 Dog Bite Reports Across a Decade. The Law Is Two Laws.
NYC DOHMH dog bite data, 2015 to 2024: 34,033 reports, 4,041 in 2024 alone. Pit Bull is the top named breed. NY runs a hybrid liability framework.
Key Finding
NYC's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene logged 34,033 reportable dog bites between 2015 and 2024, including 4,041 in 2024 alone, the highest annual count in the decade. Queens led every borough with 8,652 reports. Pit Bull was the top named breed at 5,853 bites. New York liability runs on a hybrid framework: NY Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 imposes strict liability for medical and veterinary costs when a dog is judicially adjudicated dangerous, while general dog bite damages ride on the common-law vicious propensity rule set in Bard v. Jahnke and Collier v. Zambito. As of April 2025, Flanders v. Goodfellow also lets a bite victim sue in ordinary negligence, not just on the vicious propensity rule.
Key Facts
NYC’s Department of Health logged 34,033 dog bite reports between 2015 and 2024. 2024 was the worst year on record at 4,041.
Queens led every NYC borough at 8,652 bites. ZIP 10029 in East Harlem had the highest single-ZIP count at 521.
Pit Bull was the top identified breed at 5,853 reports, 17% of all bite reports. Shih Tzu, German Shepherd, and Chihuahua followed.
New York’s dog bite framework now runs on three paths. Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 imposes strict liability for medical bills after a dangerous-dog adjudication. Common-law damages ride on the vicious propensity rule. Since Flanders v. Goodfellow (2025), a victim can also sue in ordinary negligence.
NYC’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene logged 34,033 reportable dog bites between 2015 and 2024, with 4,041 in 2024 alone. That single year was the highest annual count of the decade and a 58% jump over the 2020 pandemic-year low of 2,551. The reporting baseline didn’t change. The bite count did.
34,033
NYC dog bite reports logged with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2015 to 2024. 4,041 of those reports came in 2024, the worst single year of the decade. Queens led every borough at 8,652.
Methodology
The bite counts here come from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Dog Bite Data feed on NYC Open Data, accessed May 2026, covering calendar years 2015 through 2024. N = 34,033 records. Each record carries date of bite, borough, ZIP code, plus owner-reported breed, gender, age, and spay or neuter status where available.
Sample frame: all bites reported to DOHMH under NYC Health Code Article 11, which requires every animal bite involving a human to be reported within 24 hours. Records flagged “Other” borough (1,482) represent bites reported on behalf of NYC residents bitten outside the five boroughs or with incomplete location data, and we hold those out of the borough breakdown. Breed identification is owner-reported at the time of the bite report, which means “UNKNOWN” appears on 6,153 records and Pit Bull descriptors split across multiple labels (Pit Bull, American Pit Bull Terrier/Pit Bull, American Pit Bull Mix).
Note
Severity is not a field in this dataset. CDC bite-surveillance literature estimates between one in four and one in six dog bites are reported to authorities, which means the true citywide count runs three to six times the DOHMH file.
NYC Bite Reports Hit a Decade High in 2024
Bite reports rose every year from 2020 forward. 2020 logged 2,551, the lowest year of the decade. 2021 climbed to 2,921. 2022 hit 3,464. 2023 reached 3,865. 2024 closed at 4,041, the highest annual count on record. Across the full 2015 to 2024 window, NYC averaged 3,403 reportable bites per year.
The 2024 number isn’t a quirk of the calendar. Three structural reasons line up with the climb. Pandemic dog adoptions surged in 2020 and 2021, bringing inexperienced households into ownership during a window when training classes and veterinary socialization visits ran on remote schedules. Off-leash enforcement in NYC parks has remained a complaint volume topic at every Community Board meeting tracked through 2024. And NYC Health Code Article 161 dog-licensing compliance runs low citywide, with most dogs unlicensed, which means the city has limited line-of-sight to which animals it actually has.
Reporting baselines didn’t change. The 2024 bite count rose because the underlying exposure did.
Queens led every borough across the full decade at 8,652 reported bites. Manhattan followed at 7,694, Brooklyn at 7,317, the Bronx at 6,025, and Staten Island at 2,863. The borough order isn’t a population leaderboard. Manhattan ranks second in bites despite holding fewer residents than Brooklyn or Queens because population density, sidewalk congestion, and tourist exposure all concentrate dog-to-stranger contact per square mile.
ZIP 10029 in East Harlem Is the Top Single Postal Zone
The single-ZIP leader across the decade is 10029, the East Harlem corridor running from East 96th to East 124th between Fifth and the East River, at 521 reported bites. Twelve more ZIPs cross the 250-bite threshold across the decade: 11208 in East New York (367), 10128 on the Upper East Side (361), 10065 on the Upper East Side (329), 11368 in Corona (315), 10314 in Mid-Island Staten Island (306), 11377 in Woodside (281), 10312 in South Shore Staten Island (257), 11207 in East New York and Brownsville (256), 10467 in Norwood in the Bronx (252), 10456 in Morrisania in the Bronx (250), 11234 in Bergen Beach and Mill Basin in Brooklyn (250), and 11373 in Elmhurst in Queens (250).
The high-density ZIPs aren’t all the same shape. East Harlem (10029) and the Upper East Side (10128, 10065) sit at the top of Manhattan’s density curve and the bite numbers track that density. East New York (11208, 11207) and Corona (11368) are denser-than-average outer-borough ZIPs with high public housing concentration. The Staten Island entries (10314, 10312) cover lower-density single-family zones where off-leash backyard incidents and visitor bites both contribute. No single explanatory variable carries every leader ZIP.
Those 13 ZIPs at the 250-bite threshold together account for 3,995 reports, or 11.7% of the citywide total. The bite distribution doesn’t pinch into a few postal zones. It spreads across most of the five boroughs, which means the prevention pressure isn’t a hot-spot fix.
Pit Bull Sits at the Top of the Breed Column
Breed is owner-reported at the bite-report stage and isn’t always cleanly tagged. Across the 34,033 records, 6,153 list “UNKNOWN” breed and another roughly 1,900 split across “MIXED,” “MIXED BREED,” and “Mixed/Other.” The top named breeds with cleaner identification: Pit Bull at 5,853, Shih Tzu at 949, German Shepherd at 940, Chihuahua at 869, Yorkshire Terrier at 654, Siberian Husky at 507, Rottweiler at 494, and Maltese at 475. When the three Pit Bull label variants are merged (Pit Bull, American Pit Bull Terrier/Pit Bull, American Pit Bull Mix), the combined count reaches 7,048, the highest breed concentration in the file by a factor of seven.
Owner-reported breed data has well-documented identification limits. A 2015 American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior position statement and a series of veterinary surveys have shown that visual identification of mixed-breed dogs by owners disagrees with DNA testing more than half the time, especially for dogs labeled “Pit Bull.” The bite count for that label tracks both genuine Pit Bull bites and bites by stocky-build mixes assigned to that bucket. That said, the gap between the top label and every other named breed is large enough that mislabeling doesn’t erase the trend.
NYC has no breed-specific legislation. NY State expressly preempted breed bans in 1996 under NY Agriculture and Markets Law § 107(5) , which forbids local laws from regulating dogs in a manner that is breed-specific. The result is that the bite report data identifies a breed pattern that the law refuses to treat as legally relevant.
The Three Paths That Decide a NYC Bite Case
New York’s dog bite framework now runs on three tracks. First, NY Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 creates a strict-liability mechanism. Once a dog is judicially adjudicated dangerous in the dangerous-dog proceeding that § 123(2) sets out, the owner becomes strictly liable for the bitten person’s medical and veterinary costs. That adjudication can be triggered after the bite by the person bitten, the dog control officer, or a peace officer petitioning a court of competent jurisdiction.
Second, every other element of damages, including pain and suffering, lost wages, future medical care, and emotional distress, runs on the common-law rule the New York Court of Appeals set in Collier v. Zambito, 1 N.Y.3d 444 (2004) and Bard v. Jahnke, 6 N.Y.3d 592 (2006). Under that rule, the bite plaintiff proves the owner knew or should have known the dog had vicious propensities. Knowledge can come from prior bites, growling at strangers, lunging on a leash, biting other animals, or being kept as a guard dog. Before 2025, a victim who couldn’t prove that knowledge had no claim at all, even when the injury was severe.
That changed on April 17, 2025. In Flanders v. Goodfellow, 44 N.Y.3d 57 (2025) , the New York Court of Appeals overruled Bard v. Jahnke to the extent it barred a common-law negligence claim against the owner of a domestic animal. A bite victim now has a choice. They can still pursue strict liability when the owner knew or should have known the dog was dangerous. Or they can sue in ordinary negligence, proving the owner failed to use reasonable care to prevent a foreseeable bite. The earlier rule from Doerr v. Goldsmith, 25 N.Y.3d 1114 (2015) , which blocked negligence claims for non-vicious behavior, no longer controls after Flanders.
Three paths, one bite. The strict-liability piece pays the ER bill. The propensity rule and, since Flanders, ordinary negligence pay everything else.
That hybrid framework changes how a bite case gets built. The medical record alone, without proof of the dog’s prior history, isn’t enough to recover the full damages. Skilled bite-case investigation pulls 311 complaint records, NYC DOHMH dangerous dog complaint files, prior bite reports against the same animal, and neighbor witness statements about the dog’s earlier behavior. NYC’s 311 system carries an “Animal in a Park” and “Animal Abuse” complaint stream that often turns up the priors that the formal bite record doesn’t capture.
What This Means for People Bitten in NYC
If you were bitten by a dog in NYC, three points the data above changes the calculus on.
The bite is supposed to be reported. NYC Health Code Article 11 requires the bite to be reported to DOHMH within 24 hours, typically by the treating physician or ER. That report creates the official record that anchors any later civil claim and triggers the rabies-exposure protocol. If the bite wasn’t reported, the bitten person or someone on their behalf can report it directly to 311 or DOHMH after the fact.
A dangerous-dog adjudication is a separate proceeding from a civil claim. Filing a § 123 dangerous-dog complaint in the local court starts the process. A successful adjudication triggers § 123’s strict-liability rule for medical and veterinary costs, which is the floor of any later civil recovery. The civil case for pain, suffering, and lost wages runs separately, on the vicious-propensity rule or, since Flanders, on ordinary negligence.
Homeowner and renter insurance is the practical funding source. Most NYC dog bite recoveries don’t come from the dog owner’s personal assets. They come from a homeowner, condo, co-op, or renter insurance policy that names the owner. Some policies exclude specified breeds. Some exclude all dogs. Reading the declarations page early in the case identifies whether coverage exists. Where coverage exists, the policy limits frequently cap the recovery before damages would otherwise hit higher.
NYC’s bite report file is large, growing, and uneven across the five boroughs. The legal framework asks more from the bite plaintiff than a pure strict-liability state would. Both can be true at once.
One bite, three paths to recovery.
Sources
- NYC DOHMH via NYC Open Data. (2024). DOHMH Dog Bite Data, 2015 to 2024. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Health/DOHMH-Dog-Bite-Data/rsgh-akpg
- NY State Senate. Agriculture and Markets Law Article 7, Licensing, Identification and Control of Dogs (§ 121 to § 123). https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/AGM/A7
- New York Court of Appeals. (2006). Bard v. Jahnke, 6 N.Y.3d 592, 2006 NY Slip Op 03440, NY Court of Appeals, 2006. https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2006/2006_03440.htm
- New York Court of Appeals. (2004). Collier v. Zambito, 1 N.Y.3d 444, 2004 NY Slip Op 00960, NY Court of Appeals, 2004. https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2004/2004_00960.htm
- New York Court of Appeals. (2015). Doerr v. Goldsmith, 25 N.Y.3d 1114, 2015 NY Slip Op 04752, NY Court of Appeals, 2015. https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2015/2015_04752.htm
- New York Court of Appeals. (2025). Flanders v. Goodfellow, 44 N.Y.3d 57, 2025 NY Slip Op 02261, NY Court of Appeals, April 17 2025. https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2025/2025_02261.htm
- NYC DOHMH. NYC Health Code Article 11, Reportable Diseases and Conditions. https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/providers/reporting-and-services/notifiable-diseases-and-conditions-reporting-central.page
Updated June 14, 2026
Frequently asked questions
- How many dog bites are reported in NYC each year?
NYC's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene logged 34,033 dog bite reports between 2015 and 2024. 2024 was the highest single-year count at 4,041 reports, followed by 2023 at 3,865. The lowest year was 2020 at 2,551, which tracked the early pandemic drop in city activity. NYC Health Code Article 11 requires every dog bite involving humans to be reported to DOHMH within 24 hours.
- Which NYC borough has the most dog bites?
Queens led every borough with 8,652 reported bites between 2015 and 2024, followed by Manhattan at 7,694, Brooklyn at 7,317, the Bronx at 6,025, and Staten Island at 2,863. ZIP code 10029 in East Harlem had the highest single-ZIP count at 521 bites. These are reported bites. CDC bite-surveillance literature estimates that only one in four to one in six dog bites get reported to authorities, so the actual numbers run higher.
- Is New York a strict liability state for dog bites?
Not generally. New York runs a hybrid framework. NY Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 imposes strict liability for medical and veterinary costs once a dog is judicially adjudicated dangerous in a special proceeding. Damages beyond those medical costs, including pain and suffering and lost wages, can be recovered under the common-law rule from Bard v. Jahnke and Collier v. Zambito by proving the owner knew or should have known of the animal's vicious propensities. Since Flanders v. Goodfellow (2025), a victim can also bring an ordinary negligence claim when the owner failed to use reasonable care, even without proof of vicious propensity.
- What is the vicious propensity rule in NY dog bite cases?
The vicious propensity rule, set by the NY Court of Appeals in Collier v. Zambito (2004) and Bard v. Jahnke (2006), means a dog owner is liable for harm caused by their dog only if the owner knew or should have known the dog had vicious propensities. Prior bites, growling at strangers, lunging on a leash, or being kept as a guard dog can establish notice. Before 2025 that knowledge was the only route to full damages. After Flanders v. Goodfellow, a victim can also proceed in ordinary negligence.
- Why do you have to wait 10 days after a dog bite in NYC?
New York requires a 10-day observation period for any dog that bites a person, set by NY Public Health Law and enforced by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The window lets health officials confirm the animal isn't showing signs of rabies, which is why the dog has to be confined and monitored rather than destroyed right away. For an injury claim, those 10 days are also when prior bite records, vaccination history, and complaints filed with NYC Animal Care Centers should be preserved. Witness memories fade fast and the owner's knowledge of the dog's history is central to recovery under New York's vicious propensity rule. Talking to an attorney before the quarantine ends preserves evidence the case will need later.
- What is the one-bite rule in New York State?
New York follows a modified one-bite rule. To recover pain and suffering damages, the injured person generally has to show the dog's owner knew or should have known the animal had vicious propensities, which courts call scienter. Proof can come from prior bites, snapping, lunging, an owner's own statements, or, in some cases, breed-specific behavior. Under Agriculture and Markets Law § 123, medical and veterinary costs are recoverable on a strict liability basis once a dog is adjudicated dangerous. Since Flanders v. Goodfellow (2025), a victim who can't prove that knowledge can still recover pain and suffering by showing the owner failed to use reasonable care under ordinary negligence. NYC's DOHMH data tracks tens of thousands of reported bites across the boroughs, and the owner's awareness of past aggression is often the decisive evidentiary question.
- What is the fine for a dog bite in NYC?
NYC doesn't treat a dog bite primarily as a fine matter. Under the NYC Health Code, a bite has to be reported to DOHMH and the dog may be quarantined, with administrative penalties on the owner that typically run a few hundred dollars depending on the dog's history and whether it was running off-leash. Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 adds a separate track for dogs adjudicated dangerous, which can trigger mandatory confinement, restraint orders, and, in rare cases, euthanasia. The bigger financial exposure for the owner is usually civil liability for the injured person's medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering, which sits separate from any city or state fine.
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Antin, J. S. (2026, May 13). NYC Logged 34,033 Dog Bite Reports Across a Decade. The Law Is Two Laws.. AEE Law Insights. https://aeelaw.com/insights/nyc-dog-bite-data-strict-liability-2026/
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