Unleashing Rescue Ink on TV

“You don’t send a Boy Scout after a bad guy,” says Joe Panz in the first episode of the new show on the National Geographic Channel, “Rescue Ink: Unleashed.” “You send a bad guy after a bad guy. The difference is, we’re your bad guys.”

Weighing a total of around 1,700 pounds and with more than 80 tattoos among them, the guys of the Island Park-based animal rescue group Rescue Ink know exactly how they look and the impression they give. Their imposing demeanor was one of the reasons that this unlikely group of animal lovers was asked to film a TV show for National Geographic.

“Rescue Ink: Unleashed,” which premieres Friday at 10 p.m., follows members of the group as they take on cases in the New York area. They see much more than just abused dogs and cats (although there are those): They chase some chickens that someone dumped in a Queens neighborhood, and take piranhas that were being kept in a fish tank in the city to the Atlantis Marine World aquarium in Riverhead.

“The main thing we always talk about is that it’s not how many [animals] we’ve saved, it’s how many we can save or how many we didn’t save,” said G, whose colleagues, like him, go by first names or nicknames because they tend to make a lot of enemies while doing their work. “How many animals lost their lives because we weren’t there?”

For Rescue Ink, the show isn’t about making themselves famous or selling T-shirts; it’s all about raising awareness of animals in trouble. “I’m a retired detective,” said Angel, the group’s very own pet detective, who used to work with the NYPD. “I’ve been in the media before for homicide, because we would use the media with that to help us. And that’s what we’re doing now, too.”