Violent crime up in bustling NYC tourist hub — no matter how Mayor Adams spins it
Violent crime is spiking in the Big Apple’s busiest tourist hub — even as Mayor Eric Adams is set to deliver a State of the City speech raving about how much safer the five boroughs are.
NYPD crime stats show that as of Sept. 8 compared to the same period in 2023, robberies have soared more than 90% and felony assaults jumped nearly 73% in the Manhattan’s Midtown North Precinct — which covers tourist magnets like Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Plaza, the Theater District and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Burglaries also jumped 58%, while the precinct has handled three murders — one more than last year over the same span — and two more rapes, from seven last year to nine this year.
“Society is a mess, and all we can do is pray,” a security guard working at Eighth Avenue and West 47th Street told The Post on Sunday.
“Every day there’s something, whether it’s drugs or the homeless,” the worker said.
A local said neighborhood vagrants can be particularly troublesome.
“They’re disturbing people that live in the building,” the source said. “They block the stairs. We don’t let them stay, so we have to tell them to leave. That’s why [security] are here.”
The stats for Midtown North — not to be confused with the NYPD Manhattan North patrol borough — are in contrast to citywide figures for the same period, which show an overall 2.5% drop in crime in the five boroughs, including a nearly 13% dip in murder.
“This is a beautiful block, the problems come in waves, and when they do, we bring attention to it, and it gets fixed,” said a 55-year-old local, who gave his name as Ojo. “We have had problems with empty buildings on this block, but since that was fixed, it’s been good. We have a block association so that does help a lot.”
Citywide burglaries have also dropped nearly 9% year to date.
The softer stats are expected to be the linchpin of Adams’ State of the City address Monday.
A rep for the mayor said in an e-mail to The Post on Sunday, “Public safety and justice are the prerequisites to prosperity, and since day one of this administration, we’ve been squarely focused on keeping New Yorkers safe.
“Since the start of the administration, we’ve taken more than 18,000 illegal guns off the streets, implemented policies to bring shootings down in August to the lowest number known for that month, brought robberies on our subway system down to the lowest number in recorded history, and seen eight straight months of overall crime declines.
“The NYPD is filled with dedicated public servants who continue to work and deliver for this city every single day.”
Several residents and merchants in Midtown North said that while the figures may be grim so far this year, they are better than in the recent past.
“It’s certainly safer than COVID times,” local Adam Richardson, 51, said. “Of course we have the problems with the shelter and the halfway house, but I think it’s definitely much improved.
“A lot, lot less syringes. That used to be a real problem.”
Another resident, Sal Baker, 42, agreed that things have improved.
“Much better than a year ago. Much much better,” he said. “It was awful last year.
“There used to be needles everywhere, so it was a big problem with people walking their dogs,” Baker added. “Not only needles, but the little pink and purple capsules of drugs that had fentanyl.”
Still, underground can be a different story.
As The Post reported Sunday, the murder rate in the subway system has soared by 60% this year.
While overall transit crime has dipped, eight people have been killed in the subways so far this year, up from five over the same time span in 2023.
From 1997 to 2020, there were never more than five murders in the subway system in a single year, according to the earliest public NYPD data.
But in Midtown North, which has a steady flow of tourist traffic — particularly with the holidays approaching — it has been a recent outlier when it comes to violent crime.
According to NYPD stats, the neighborhood saw 158 robberies through Sept. 8 this year, up from 83 over the same period last year, for a jump of 90.4%.
Cops also reported 204 felony assaults in the area, up from just 118 last year, or an increase of 72.9%, while burglaries jumped to 139, a boost from 88 last year for a 58% increase.
Even the NYPD’s neighboring Midtown South Precinct, which saw an overall drop in crime of more than 10% over last year, reported four murders — two more than last year — and 20 rapes so far this year compared to 10 over the same span last year, the stats show.
Midtown South encompasses other city mega-sites such as Penn Station, Madison Square Garden and Greeley Square. It also includes a bustling block that’s so downtrodden it’s been dubbed the “Strip of Despair.”
Merchants along the Eighth Avenue corridor said open-air drug use, emotionally disturbed vagrants and brazen shoplifters have become a way of life along the block.
“It’s like we’ve been bombed, a resident said in an earlier Post report. “It’s a bad situation. You see money exchanging, you see the crack pipes being lit, you see people fighting.
“You don’t want to dare get stuck in the middle of that.”
