Turns out that all it took to clean up the benighted, crime-infested northwest corner of Washington Square Park was political will.
Local residents fruitlessly begged the NYPD for years to do something about the open drug dealing, use and associated criminality in the notorious section of the park.
It was hard to miss the dysfunction, degeneracy and despair on full display, night and day, in the leafy, 10-acre jewel at the terminus of Fifth Avenue.
For the last decade, a quarter of the park was surrendered to the criminal class and its sad, drug-addicted dependents.
Neighborhood pleas for sanity and intervention were met with desultory, two-man NYPD patrols passing through every 15 minutes, when drug sales would pause before quickly resuming.
This business-as-usual negligence came to a screaming halt in October when the NYPD and the feds arrested 19 dealers, charging them in federal court, where they’ll face serious prosecution and, hopefully, serious time.
Since the big bust, the NYPD has assigned dozens of officers to maintain a constant presence in the park.
The result has been both miraculous and predictable: a 65% drop in all crime, and an 89% decline in major crime.
The park is no longer an open-air drug market but once again a place for rest and recreation.
There was no need for an extensive examination of the root causes of society’s problems; District Attorney Alvin Bragg could have skipped daubing watercolors in the park as part of his absurd “art of healing” workshop in July.
All it took was a thorough application of handcuffs and an ongoing patrol of cops. Was that so hard?
As the dawn of the Mamdani administration approaches, Washington Square Park should be a test case.
If the new mayor rolls back police work, we’ll see the noxious weeds of criminality return to the park.
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But if it does, the fix will be obvious.
Meanwhile, the Washington Square Park experience should be replicated citywide. There are hotspots of dangerous antisocial behavior everywhere.
Time for the NYPD and its federal partners to get busy.
