Collect Pond Park, at the intersections of Lafayette, Leonard, Franklin and Centre Streets in Manhattan, is not the most popular park in the world. It's frequented most often by a combination of local beat cops, transit workers, homeless people and employees of the nearby courthouse.

But now a roving gang of slimeballs has infiltrated the park and ruined it for everyone. (And no, we don't mean skateboarding teenagers.) According to NYCTheBlog, there are rats, some the size of bloated kittens or puppies. The park has now been dubbed "Rat Zoo." (Free admission!)

Ratso Rizzo would have felt rather at home here, what with the benches missing seats, random holes in the walkway and busted-up sidewalks -- this despite a recent $3.5 million grant to clean up the hellhole, which will surely be discovered in some bureaucrat's Cayman Islands bank account within the next year.

"Rats have created a network of tunnels underneath," explains NYCTheBlog's Paolo Mastrangelo. "I found it interesting that this park serves a working-class population during the day" -- a criminal court, family court and legal-aid society surround it -- "and indigent people at night -- both demographics, apparently, not worthy of a cared-for and landscaped park."

The way things are going these days, no demographic is worthy of much of anything, it seems, except for fare hikes and bedbugs.

The video of the rat posse, after the jump.