Tag: Greenwich

A lawless, drug-infested Washington Square Park is horrifying even famously free-spirited Greenwich Village residents.

“We may be liberal but this has gone too far,” lamented Steven Hill, who has called the neighborhood home since 1980. “There have always been drugs in the park, mostly pot, but what’s emerged this spring is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

Washington Square Park’s northwest corner was overtaken in recent months by a crack-and-heroin-filled “drug den,” while boisterous, booze-soaked raves around the central fountain have kept neighbors up until the wee hours and left the historic green space trashed each morning.

The city responded to more than a month of complaints and numerous Post queries by erecting barriers on Tuesday, closing off the northwest corner to both legal and illegal uses, while cops in recent nights have boosted their presence.

But neighbors are still incensed by the condition of the park and what they believe are token efforts by the city to return it to lawfulness.

“The zombies are now near the fountain, as well as next to the chess [southwest] corner. They’ve simply moved up about 200 meters from the now shuttered end of the park,” one angry neighbor emailed The Post on Wednesday. “I think all hell is going to break loose.”

The Post toured the park this week, after the “drug den” was closed, and still found the flower beds littered with syringes and scores of empty drug capsules. A park gardener told Hill he found two dozen syringes while tending the grounds Wednesday morning.

Another resident contacted The Post following a recent 8 a.m. stroll to the park’s dog run, reporting a female giving oral sex to a drug dealer, with other men “lined up for their turn” with their pants open.

Another neighbor captured video of illegal fireworks lighting the air above the arch in the early Friday morning hours, past the park’s unenforced midnight closing time.

‘The zombies are now near the fountain.’

An angry neighbor emailed The Post

The park, with its majestic Romanesque arch at the end of Fifth Avenue, is one of the city’s most scenic landmarks and long a haven for festive New Yorkers and visitors alike to let their freak fly. The area is also home to New York University and some of the city’s most coveted real estate.

But over the spring emerged an “open-air drug bazaar” – a nearly 24-hour-a-day parade of addicts, drug peddlers and prostitutes, some openly hitting pipes or shooting up with syringes on benches.

NYPD data shows robbery is up 73 percent this year in the 6th Precinct, which covers the park. Sex crimes have surged 36 percent. There have been two shootings –up from none last year. There have three cases of grand larceny and four felony assaults reported inside the park alone in the first quarter of 2021, before the current surge in warm-weather activity.

NYU issues regular safety alerts regarding trouble in a park long promoted as a university asset, including two students who were assaulted in the park two weeks ago. In late April, a park melee disrupted the filming of the Amazon comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

Police scuffled with late-night party goers in another April incident before a cop was punched in the mouth. Just days later, a man was slashed and hospitalized trying to break up a fight there.

“The situation in the park and its surroundings has gotten out of control,” said Ruth Wyatt, who has lived with a view of the landmark for 25 years.

Hill texted The Post recently after witnessing one particularly disturbing incident:

“Passed by the benches of addicts, one smoking crack or whatever (and also) a young man shooting up into a vein in his arm without a care who was watching, drawing blood into the barrel of the syringe, shaking the syringe, before he pushed the blood back into his vein.”

“I know drugs have been in Washington Square Park for a long time, but I have never seen anything like this before,” said another local resident, Jennifer Nyp.

Drug enforcement across the city has all but disappeared during the de Blasio administration. New York City reported just 5,372 drug arrests last year, by far the lowest on record. The decline is largely connected to the 2019 decriminalization of pot and last month’s legalization of weed, but not entirely. The number of drug arrests have declined every year under the de Blasio regime. There were nearly 20,000 drug arrests in 2013, the year before de Blasio took office, and more than 38,000 in 2000, under Mayor Giuliani.

‘I know drugs have been in Washington Square Park for a long time, but I have never seen anything like this before.’

Jennifer Nyp

A few days before the police “crackdown,” a Post reporter passed through the northwest corner drug den and three times within a minute was offered a shopping cart of narcotics, including “fine bud,” cocaine and crack. One peddler offered $20 bags of crack, or six for $100.

Another crack dealer, Tony from the Bronx, nearly emaciated and sporting a North Face stocking cap even on the warm May evening, hawked “eight-balls” [an eighth of ounce] of cocaine for $350, and as much crack as we wanted. He also offered to sell the pipe needed to smoke the rocks of cocaine right there on a park bench.

Tony later followed the reporter onto the street, screaming. Offers of crack were easy to find again Thursday night, after the addicts were scattered around the park.

“The condition of (Washington Square Park) is disgusting,” said Susan Lee, a Tribeca resident running for City Council. “It’s literally anarchy. The police can’t do anything. The park rangers can’t do anything.”

Lee recently stepped in feces while campaigning in the park, “and I wasn’t sure if was from a dog or a human,” she said. Appalled, she threw out her shoes and walked home in socks.

“The last few weeks have been hell,” said Diane Nardone, president of the board at 11 Fifth Avenue, a 20-story co-op steps from the park, citing the late-night raves with banned amplified music that echoes across the neighborhood. Wheeled vehicles, including bicycles, are officially banned, but gas-fueled motorbikes have run freely across the park’s pedestrian footpaths most evenings.

Nardone said residents of her building, and others around it, are ready to flee the neighborhood and maybe the city if the situation doesn’t improve soon.

A group of residents recently penned an angry missive to local leaders demanding action on 20 different bullet-pointed problems with the park.

“We are fed up,” the letter says repeatedly, listing an array of quality-of-life problems, including “the lack of enforcement of basic long-standing laws and illegal activity;” the “urination, defecation, spitting, discarded drug paraphernalia, alcohol bottles and cans and general filth in those areas of the park;” and “junkies sleeping, having sex, generating trash and intimidating patrons of the park.”

An impromptu meeting in the park on May 21 with state Sen. Brad Hoylman left neighbors flustered. Hoylman is also a candidate for Manhattan borough president.

“It seems clear to me that he doesn’t want a law and order solution to anything,” said Brian Dube, who has lived on the north side of the park since 1981.

“Hoylman said a lot of nothing,” added another neighbor who attended the meeting, but asked that his name not be used. “He pointed his fingers at everybody. De Blasio. The police. NYU. PEP [Parks Enforcement Police]. ThriveNYC [the mayor’s failed mental health initiative]. He’s a bobber and a weaver. We walked through a cloud of crack smoke to get to the meeting and he acted like it was normal.”

Hoylman did not respond to repeated efforts by The Post to reach him. He cancelled a public meeting in the park planned for May 22 just minutes after being contacted by The Post.

“Hoylman a disappointment,” read the subject line of one community email that went out after the meeting.

The city Parks Department declined a request by The Post to interview Commissioner Mitchell Silver, but issued a statement that it is “working to increase programming in [the northwest] section of the park.”

‘I know what every cop is thinking. It’s this bad and it isn’t even summer yet.’

Michael Alcazar

That effort includes a new afternoon arts & crafts program for children at the tables in the park’s northwest corner that started on Wednesday, hours after the “drug den” was closed off, in partnership with the Washington Square Park Conservancy.

Conservancy spokesperson Grace Harman said that “the drug problem … precedes the pandemic” and that it “works to mitigate the issues with our own creative, program related solutions” while “WSPC-supported gardeners ensure that sightlines are open so it’s harder to hide illegal activity in the more tucked away areas of the Park.”

Drugs, crime and other illegal activity, she said, are “the responsibility of the NYPD.”

Dube, and other residents, say that police have been missing in action, too, just like political leaders.

“All the issues we’re looking to address can be fixed in 15 minutes by NYPD,” he said. “But they’re no longer interested in enforcing anything. I’m pretty disgusted with the entire situation.”

He added, “De Blasio seems like the worst mayor ever. The city is just going down the sewer.”

Neighbors said they were told during a recent community meeting with police that manpower at the 6th Precinct is down 50 percent over the past year. The NYPD would not confirm that figure. But one source told The Post that the precinct’s headcount is down “significantly” and that a 50-percent reduction “sounded plausible.”

The de Blasio administration chopped $1 billion from the NYPD budget last year.

But NYPD says it’s stepping up its presence in the park in response to the current crisis.

“The Commanding Officer of the 6th Precinct is working to address the crime and quality of life conditions in Washington Square Park,” NYPD spokesperson Jessica McRorie told The Post. “These efforts include the assignment of public safety officers to exclusively patrol the park.”

Michael Alcazar, a retired NYPD detective who worked undercover in Washington Square Park and is now an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said NYPD budget cuts, the disbanding of the anti-crime unit, cop retirements and anti-police public sentiment have had a negative ripple effect.

“Policing the area is not difficult with the use of undercovers and anticrime,” said Alcazar. “But investigators have been redeployed to backfill uniform patrol at least three days out of the week, leaving investigators little time to conduct narcotics and vice investigations. The priority right now is the uptick in shootings and homicides. There’s so much going on in the city right now and police have been redeployed everywhere.”

Added Alcazar: “I know what every cop is thinking. It’s this bad and it isn’t even summer yet.”

Additional reporting by Dean Balsamini.