By: Hellen Zaboulani
The financial district has taken a turn for the worse, with crime and vagrants running rampant.
As reported by the NY Post, the once posh, quiet neighborhood bounded by Chambers Street, the West Side Highway, the Battery and the East River, has deteriorated, now being mired with filth, shopliftings and homelessness. Thieves and vagrants have been emboldened by the lack of restraint, and have made robbing, assault and looting regular occurrences, locals say. “It’s gotten more outlandish,” Keith Ruiz, 29, a concierge at 71 Broadway, said referring to the surge in crime in the neighborhood. Perps “come down to Wall Street because they know where the money is. … It’s all money-driven crime.”
Even some of the fancy residential buildings have become an oasis for drug dealers and other crime.
Ashley Weil, a 28-year-old beauty buyer, told the Post that a neighbor in her building on John Street was pistol-whipped for asking new tenants, operating an unlicensed tattoo parlor on her floor, to lower the volume on their music. The unseemly residents were finally evicted this summer, following multiple complaints. “What happened in our building was alarming,” Weil said. “I never imagined anything like that would happen in FiDi.”
“I’m hoping that the new mayor can do something more for the police, but it seems that nothing’s moved yet,” said Antonella Silvio, co-owner of Pisillo Italian Panini, a restaurant at Nassau and Ann Streets where the cash register got swiped in April. He said the establishment now keeps a baseball bat under the counter, for old fashion protection. Notable shocking crimes in September included a Queens woman who randomly slashed an 82-year-old doorman in the head with a machete on Stone Street and Broadway. There were also at least four trash fires set along Cliff, William and Water streets in September. “It’sbecomes a free-for-all,” said Adam Weiss, CEO of AMW PR. “I don’t remember this neighborhood before having such bad presence.”
NYPD data confirms the complaints. In the First Precinct, which includes the Financial District, major crimes have jumped 50 percent his year, compared to 33% citywide, the NYPD data shows. Burglary has risen 70 percent, rape is up 55 percent, robbery 15 percent, and felony assault 16 percent.
As per the Post, lawyer Thomas Kenniff, a Republican who ran an unsuccessful bid for Manhattan DA against soft-on-crime Alvin Bragg last November, said the crime spree is a result of lenient bail reform laws, coupled with lighter foot traffic in the neighborhood. “The office buildings in Manhattan are less than half full from everything I’ve observed, and that creates fertile soil for homelessness or criminals who feel that they have an area of operation,” Kenniff said.
An NYPD spokesperson declined to comment on the increase in crime in the neighborhood, except to say that incidents are up throughout the city. The department told the Post that in the 1st Precinct, total arrests are up 28 percent for the year– including 12 percent for robbery, 7 percent for felony assaults, 43 percent for grand larceny, and a whopping 100 percent for burglaries.