Washington Square Park Drug Crackdown: A Progress Report

Washington Square Park has long had a drug problem—everyone knows this, and everyone who is honest about public health and safety in public spaces admits this. What can, and should, be done about the pervasive drug dealers, and drug addicts, in the park, especially its northwest corner around MacDougal Street/Washington Square West, is more complicated.

While 6th Precinct cops regularly arrested drug dealers in and around the park—crack, fentanyl, heroin, illegal marijuana, more—as Straus News has reported, the dealers are just as regularly cut loose, regardless of any outstanding drug cases they may have against them. One recently arrested crack dealer, a 63-year-old woman, gave her address as a Financial District homeless shelter.

Who’s taking advantage of whom, and how many nonprofit organizations of various types have had this woman—and her drug-addicted customers—as a client is open to speculation. There are, without question, many “advocates” making good money providing “services” that keep the revolving door in motion.

Meanwhile, the people, many of them anyway, have had enough.

On Thursday, Oct. 30, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) announced the indictment of 19 people for conspiring to sell millions of doses of opioids, including fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, heroin, and crack cocaine in the Washington Square Park area over a period of five years.

“My message should be clear,” Said US Attorney Jay Clayton. “If you’re a drug trafficker operating in any of New York’s parks, or anywhere our kids walk or ride to school, we’re going to bring you to justice.”

“These drug traffickers allegedly flooded Washington Square Park with dangerous narcotics that claimed two lives and harmed countless more people,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “They turned this iconic park into an open-air drug market, jeopardizing the safety and quality-of-life of families, students, and the entire community.”

With the NYPD’s subsequent announcement it would be sending 68 additional officers to the 6th Precinct to provide 24/7 coverage of Washington Square Park, the great crackdown began.

But how’s it going?

On Monday, Nov. 3, a Washington Square Park Conservancy statement was ecstatic: “Through the weekend it has been nothing short of inspiring to hear the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the community on the impact these recent developments have had on the quality of life experience within the park.”

For its part, NYU spokesperson Joseph Tirella said the university is “pleased” with the increased police presence.

Since then, Straus News has been through the park many times and can report the ongoing crackdown is real. Officers brought in from precincts citywide are highly visible, as is the Life Safety Systems Division Mobile Command Post truck parked on Washington Square North.

Though cops won’t speak on the record, they understand why they are there, that they are largely, if not entirely, appreciated. One officer, in from the 75th Precinct in Brownsville, Brooklyn, said that at least ten people had thanked him for being there. Police also know that when they leave again—anything is possible. The life of a working street cop is nothing if not Sisyphean.

But what of the park’s variegated users and neighbors? On the afternoons of Thursday and Friday, Nov. 14 and 15, reporter extraordinaire Marie Pohl canvassed the area. The stories she returned echo a truism from Herman Melville, “Many Men Have Many Minds”—and many women too.

Voices in the Park

Chess player Marchel Anderson: “Getting things clean is always a good thing.
 Right? Removing the snow off the street.
You get the leaves off the ground. But it ought to be done in a timely fashion. When they came in the park, they rambled up like 15, 20 people. They had like a $20-million heist or whatever—guns, drugs, fentanyl, a whole bunch of drugs, stuff like that. But it’s nice that they came and cleaned it up, and they should do that all the time.

“It is kind of sad that someone had to die before the government could realize or recognize that it is trouble.

“When the fentanyl came inside the Black community, the United States government, they didn’t do anything about it. . . . But now Robert de Niro’s grandson died from it. . . so now, they say it’s an epidemic.

“It wasn’t no safety issue. It just didn’t look good.

“They didn’t move them [the drugs addicts].
They’re gonna move themselves. 
The beaver just comes in and tap down the trees. But the water makes its own little canals and goes its own separate way. So does the fish, and so does the algae.
 So the drug dealers and the drug users just gonna go to another place and it just starts all over again.”

Shakeema Hutcherson, 44, at the dog park: “I’ve been a dog walker and dog trainer over here for 15 years. You know, you used to have your regular crazies and things going on. But 
I feel like after COVID, it was gross. You didn’t know what you’re going to walk into, you got drug addicts, and everything around.

“Honestly, so much has changed in the last two weeks. It’s changed the vibe. Everybody feels safer. Everybody feels like things are better. Now you can go to work and not feel like when you come home, somebody’s right behind you. Or your family’s visiting from somewhere else, and they see a bunch of drug addicts laying down, coked up, or whatever they’re doing. It’s not there anymore.

“And you hope with that, that these people are getting the necessary help that they need. Once they leave the park and go into the services or whatever. 


“It’s amazing now. Now you’re good. Enjoy Washington Square Park. The only thing is the rats might run across your feet.”

Zilly Brown, 21, college student sitting on the bench with her friend Brianna Zoe, 23, also a college student, smoking weed, chatting: “I love Wash. It’s a really great place. It’s very energetic, and that’s why I love it here. It’s so diverse. So many people. And after the cleanup, it looks really good. It feels really good. The energy feels different. We come here a lot. I never felt scared ‘cause I’m from New York.”

Zoe: “I would say this has been one of the safer areas, if you’re talking about New York as a whole.”

Thursday night, two performers are covered in shaving cream: Ella Berzins, 22, and Virginia Murphey Boncek, 21, walking around the park literally smearing shaving cream all over themselves:

“We’re part of the cleanup team,” Berzins says laughing, and the reporter takes a step backward, afraid the shaving cream may land on her coat.

“For the sanitation workers of New York. And we’re trying to do something where we let people in Washington Square Park know that there are many ways to keep clean, you know? So we are sending a message of cleanliness, just general cleanliness.”

Two musicians, sousaphonist Elihu Conant-Haque, 22, originally from Saratoga Springs; and saxophonist Chris Diveki, 16, a student at Grace Church High School.

Conant-Haque: “I only recently moved here permanently. I come here in the evening to practice, ‘cause it’s peaceful.

“Drug addicts? In a couple particular areas, in the corners of the park, but not overall, no.
 I would still say that it’s not wise to stay here beyond maybe 8:30 or 9 p.m. Because then you do see a few more of them.”

Diveki: “I go to school here. I grew up here. I’m still in high school and I’ve lived here my whole life. I like to come here and listen to jazz and just write and do my own thing. I do a lot of art, not only music. [He pulls a saxophone out of his bag as he speaks.]

“I mean, Wash has always been a bit, like, just been out there, but never really any issues. I grew up going to this park as a baby. I mean, I never saw any violence, or anything that really bothered me.

“The Grand Cleanup? I didn’t really hear anything about any cleanup. 
I didn’t know I didn’t even know there was a clean-up.

“It used to be pretty heavy, especially over there [the northwest corner]. Whenever, you’d walk through, it was, like, keep your head down. Drug use. Homelessness, but, again, everyone has a story. I don’t like to label people as drug addicts or label people as just homeless, crazy people. I mean, everyone’s a person, I’d say.”

John Wells, 76, painter, lives in an apartment on Washington Square Park North.

“Well, I was thinking of the reincarnations of all the people that were hanged under the hanging tree that’s right outside our window with the derelicts and drug addicts that were sitting on that crescent bench nearby; they seem to have dissipated.

“They aren’t there anymore, and there’s the police, or the police bus or whatever you would call it, right outside the door here. They’ve been having regular gatherings of police officers, 20 officers at a time or maybe even more, a lot of policemen on our corner these days.

“I guess it’s good. I mean, I am not really wild about having a police van right outside the door, but they’re there and I say hello.

“I suppose they’re trying to keep the park free of various drug activities that may very well have been going on there.

“I don’t go to the park and I don’t really walk through the park very much. I try to avoid it, as a matter of fact. [He doesn’t want to explain why, he says it’s because of personal issues, because he doesn’t want to run into certain people.] I go around it most of the time.

“Those people [the ones who used to sit on the benches] aren’t there anymore in the way they used to be. I mean, it was quite a spectacle, actually, poor unfortunate derelicts, including on our steps. We had somebody practically die at our front door.

“That was scary. I mean, literally, he doubled over, right in the front door of the house. I mean, I don’t know if he died. But it was pretty awful. Anyway, there’s a lot of street-drug action around here. A lot of it in the park. One doesn’t know quite why this would be a kind of vortex for that kind of activity. It seems to have dissipated.”

Mom, Danielle, sitting on a park bench, watching her two small children in a playground.

“I live in San Francisco. I don’t let my kids play in the park in San Francisco. Because it’s so bad. This, here, this is a dream. This city is really nice compared to San Francisco right now.”