NYC aims to reclaim Washington Square Park from drug pushers, vagrants in latest quality-of-life push

Mayor Eric Adams on Monday launched a new joint “community coalition” with the NYPD to battle rampant drug use and vagrancy at troubled Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village.

Flanked by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and local civic leaders, Adams said 13 city agencies will team up with civil leaders to keep tabs on goings on at the 10-acre Lower Manhattan park — with the announcement coming on the heels of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s call for a new quality of life initiative.

“Last year, the city began to address the persistent public drug use, homelessness, and quality of life concerns in response to community complaints in Washington Square Park,” Adams said. “I remember we came out to the walk-through in the park, and it was not the imagination of community residents.

“It was for real,” Hizzoner said. “The drug use was there, people were using the park for their public toilet facilities and other problems that were really evident. And we saw the need to expand to the surrounding area, including to the West 4th Street subway station.”

The effort is part of Adams’ “Community Link,” which teams officials with New Yorkers to tackle neighborhood woes and concerns.

Washington Square Park seems an obvious target for the effort — the 15-year-old urban green space has been plagued with crime, homelessness and unrest in recent years.

“When we think about Washington Square Park … you think about the vibrancy of that area, artists, students, local businesses all coming together,” Bragg told reporters. “And then you see the real challenges there today, and it’s heartbreaking. But this is the recipe.”

In July, several brawls broke out at the park following the city’s annual Pride Parade.

In April, an NYU administrator was randomly slugged while walking in the park in what cops classified as a hate crime, and in 2023 a homeless man was charged with stabbing another vagrant to death there.

Drug sales have also run rampant at the park, with pushers even masquerading as artists to peddle their goods, while others sold psychedelic mushrooms out of makeshift stalls.

Adams said the new community effort will team city agencies with local residents and civic groups to patrol the park with NYPD backup to identify and shut down criminal activity and unrest.

The multi-agency coalition will meet twice a month to stay on top of things, he said.

The move coincides with Tisch’s quality of life announcement last week.

The effort, which has been likened to the NYPD’s onetime “broken windows policing” approach, would target open drug use, aggressive panhandling, public urination and other crimes both in the subway system and in the streets of the Big Apple, she said.

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