Photos by Stacie Joy
The injured man was taken to hospital, but his condition is not life-threatening, sources confirmed.
It's not immediately clear what led to the slashing, which an EVG reader said occurred right inside the park entrance.
Police have once again closed off the area around the chess tables steps away from this entrance to Tompkins, something which has happened multiple times in recent years. There have been numerous reader reports about drug use, stolen property and fights in this space.
42 comments:
The whole defund the police thing turned out to be really great for the city...
I was walking past this right after they placed the yellow tape up. My heart almost stopped. I wondered what on earth could have happened. It is truly alarming just how dangerous and unhinged people are today. I live on 7th and C and know very well how seedy Tompkins can be. When I witness things such as this, it makes me not want to go out as much. There was a stabbing at subway yesterday uptown. So many random stabbings an assaults. Since moving to NYC in 2005, I can honestly say, we live in a very different city under very different circumstances facing insurmountable challenges. I hope the Uber delivery man is alright and will heal, and hopefully won't have that horrific of a scar. My best to him.
Pray for his speedy recovery
Really sad what our neighborhood and city has become - unfortunately it seems " everyone" carries a knife or blade and if the cops ever catch the slasher, with our woke laws and current DA the slasher will be back out on the streets in no time
Hochul & Bragg should serve the jail time for every criminal that is released. The laws would change in a heartbeat.
Are we back to the good old, bad days again? Let me know when the cabs won’t drive into The Alphabet again (I mean The WARZONE.) As a 30+ year volunteer in Tompkins I can tell you the blame for Tompkins current state lies squarely on our electeds, our Commiunity Board’s “vision of park equity” and the gerrymandering of our district which has given us a real short list of viable candidates. Yesterday I met with a new group of volunteers in the “Children’s Sprinkler Area” behind the park office. The first thing we did was clean needles & works off the picnic table before we could seat folks.
Notorious - a) we haven't defunded and b) defunding doesn't mean criminals stop being criminal. We just stop paying for nothing. I personally was ghosted by the NYPD after someone stole money from my bank account.
@Anon 10:25 What I am implying is that the defund the police rhetoric and anti-cop sentiment has NYPD officers retiring in record numbers and the ones who are left are basically neutered. The sad reality is that they can only respond to the 'worst of the worst' crimes. And thanks to Bragg and Hochul criminals know they can get away with anything - over and over again - because there are no repercussions. So, here's where we are at.
If Defund would be implemented, which unfortunately it wasn't, it would free up much needed resources for mental health and help prevent that so many spiral out of sanity. ,
This comment section feels very FOX News-y.
Where are Governor Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams on this?
The name is NOT getting worse. It is REVERTING to what it was when I grew up on Ave D in the 50's, '60's and '70's..DANGEROUS as all Fuck and MINDLESSLY out-of-control..
Rudy cleaned it up and Bloomberg 'Enhanced'it..It too D'Assio and the current Con Artist to bring it all BACKWARDS.
Sadly the next guy will be like Rudy with a HARD FIST and the city will love him/her for it.
My condolences to the victim, that is a very dangerous part of the park. Too many people are armed and shooting up. The used needles are everywhere, while riding my bike I almost ran over several needles at that corner on Avenue A. The dead rats are everywhere too, I have never seen so many dead rats in the streets, and live rats crossing the street in the middle of the day. The City must do a better job dealing with the growing problems of knives and needles, garbage and rats, or else all this gentrification was for nothing other than to displace the former residents who had to deal with these exact same issues while living in much crummier non-luxury apartments. Same shit, different decade.
Utterly terrifying. It appears nowhere is safe here, including this park. Since the arrival of COVID and with the lockdown, I have never witnessed such a deluge of crime, violence, delusion, paranoia, and mental illness run amok. It is staggering with no end in sight. With the cashless bail system in place for NYC, this POS will probably be out in a day or two, which is a result of our oblivious DA Bragg. My heart goes out to this man who was victimized and assaulted. Can you imagine? A delivery bike messenger just bringing food to a customer on an app to pay his bills and then this happens no less in broad daylight??? Bonkers! May he recover soon.
Correction to my post..Sorry for mistype
The neighborhood is NOT getting worse. It is REVERTING to what it was when I grew up on Ave D in the 50's, '60's and '70's..DANGEROUS as all Fuck and MINDLESSLY out-of-control..
Rudy cleaned it up and Bloomberg 'Enhanced'it..It too D'Assio and the current Con Artist to bring it all BACKWARDS.
Sadly the next guy will be like Rudy with a HARD FIST and the city will love him/her for it.
@12:24pm: I'm not defending crime nor am I hating on gentrification but now the quality-of-life issues are impacting a more moneyed group of people who pushed out the previous residents, instead of just impacting low-income people (who get pushed to the margins of everything).
NYC is now an equal-opportunity place to get all your citizen's concerns ignored. The only way Adams would do anything would be if there were an issue at one of his favorite restaurants/clubs that he hangs out at. Otherwise, you will hear crickets (or maybe just hot air that is the functional equivalent of hearing crickets).
NYC is going down the drain, that's clear to me, and I've lived in the East Village for a very, very, very long time.
The bleeding hearts might not like it, but we have to clean up and clear out the chess tables in the southwest corner of the park. It's not safe, openly using heroin should not be normalized, it's time to take the park back.
I agree with the last comment from 1:56. Eliminate the chess tables because they are breeding grounds for criminal activity. Last Thursday, I walked past a middle aged man at the chess table shooting up and then passing out with his pants barely on him and the needle still dangling from his arm. What if the man who attacked the victim is either mentally unstable or a drug addict out of his mind? Mayor Adams is worse than DeBlassio and that's saying a lot. He doesn't appear to give two F's about our city and its' 9 million + residents. Hope this other guy pulls through and receives the medical care he deserves. If I were him, I seek out a mental health professional for PTSD.
@1:56pm: And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?
If I had a nickel for every time I've heard or read the phrase "we have to take the park back" then I'd be very wealthy right now.
I’m old enough to remember when they promised that gentrification would solve the exact same problems that are getting so much worse now. Landlords got people to move into these upscale buildings by promising them they were in one of the coolest neighborhoods around, but forgot to mention that they were doing absolutely nothing for the people who already lived here. Where do we go to to get a refund?
Thanks Giovanni. You always seem to get to the right point.
-IzF
@4:25 pm: If you moved into the area b/c it was important to you to live in one of the "coolest" locations, you aren't owed a refund: you just got an expensive education in Reality 101, that's all.
If you're someone who's lived in the area since before it was being upsold as one of the "coolest" places to live, then you know the upselling was only a marketing ploy; a lie that was told to benefit landlords via higher rents. If you're still here after enduring all of that, God bless you.
One trick to get folks to accept the disney-fication of Times Square was to let crime and "quality of life" there get so bad so that people would accept and even embrace ANY extreme "solution."
They did the same with the Lower East Side and other "red-lined" areas throughout the city, including Harlem, the South Bronx and parts of Brooklyn, where things were made to become so BAD that many cheered the giuliani POLICE STATE that followed. The fools didn't get that that police state was designed to pave the way for more gentrification to come, to make our city "a safe investment" for the monied class, NOT to make longtime residents feel "safe" in their communities.
The end result is a city of extremes: the uber-wealthy and those on the lower middle to bottom of the economic scale still holding on in the face of inflation and mass-displacement made possible by corrupt-as-fuck city councilmembers and state assemblymen and mayors who provide zoning variances, city land, subsidies (our tax dollars!) and even tax abatements (no payment of real estate taxes for 10-20-30 years!) in order to ensure the creation of new "market rate" and "luxury" apartments for monied transients, many of whom don't even live here full time, who use their units as "investments" they hold, like gold coins, as the market continues to hyper-inflate. It is CLEAR which class is served by the city and elected "representatives" who keep pushing for "up-zoning" for MORE of the same.
Ever since "covid" mania took hold in 2020, there has been CRAZY in the air. Violence is on the upswing, but NYPD has re-classified crimes so that they can declare that violent crimes are decreasing. Slimey politicians in office are more interested in furthering their careers and getting their ten years in so that they can receive a handsome pension when they are booted out, though they could be using some of the massive "discretionary funds" at their disposal to provide for those who are really in need and make some positive changes.
Another factor contributing to a rise in crime (not things like drinking in public, but REAL crime) is that cops have been on an undeclared strike/slow down since "covid." Those that we have spoken with have confided that NYPD manpower is extremely low, due to deAssio and Adams mandating "covid" shots under threat of termination (wiser cops have just LEFT the force rather than be subjected to toxic mystery shots) and because they say that no sooner do they bust a "bad guy" for something REALLY bad, that person gets released almost immediately. To them, there's no point in even making an arrest. Witness the wilding and looting in 2020. NO cops bothered to TRY to stop it - they made their point by standing down.
In a civilized society with equality and provision to those in need, we would have little or no crime. Understandably, many people carry SOMEthing as protection. That does not make them criminals.
So, what is "the answer"? We do not know exactly what led to this particular incident, but I do NOT want a fucking POLICE STATE in my neighborhood again (you saw what happened when they pulled that shit on us from 1988-1991) as a knee jerk response to it.
Freezing blocks and random searches without reasonable cause is NOT something any of us should put up with simply because a few people in our park commit crimes while the vast majority use the park for its intended purpose.
Ironically the “old” tenants actually did sweat labor for the community which made it more attractive for the “new” tenants. At this rate the whole island will be a garbage dump in ten years. I don’t know what these people did in their home states, but obviously not any community service. There’s a great group called NY Cares, and a training session on how to help your community. And, no, you can’t send your doorman or nanny to the training session.
@1:37am: What a weird rant you have, putting the word Covid in quote marks, as if it's not a real thing, and then describing Covid vaccinations as "toxic mystery shots." You sound crazy/paranoid yourself, IMO.
BTW, a lot of us would welcome ENFORCEMENT of laws (what you term a "fucking police state") so that we might be able to go about our daily business without wondering if we're going to be randomly shot or attacked.
Further, it's not "a few people in our park committing crimes" when you have to worry that you may sit on or step on a needle, or when the delivery guy gets stabbed right at the corner of 7th and Avenue A.
I'll gladly take "broken windows" policing circa 1990 over the anarchy we have now.
It would be GREAT if criminals were afraid of law enforcement (to the point that the criminals would think twice or more before committing crimes, b/c they'd get thrown into jail).
Right now, every person with criminal intent and/or craziness (or who's just bored and wants to cause trouble, as with gangs of teens running rampant) is free to do whatever they want, and the rest of us are stuck living with the outcome. That is the absolute opposite of civilization.
What we're living with now is the inmates are running the asylum, and that utterly sucks.
@9:26- Precisely. Very well said. Fear should part of a law and order strategy. Fear of getting caught. Fear of going to jail. Fear of losing your freedom, such as it is. However this should also apply to the cops as well. There has be a proper civilian oversight committee that will enforce the rules and weeds out corrupt, sadistic or unfit cops who fuck up on the job.
9:26 100000% right on.
EVERYTHING Flash said was RIDICULOUS
"In a civilized society with equality and provision to those in need, we would have little or no crime"
Pray tell when has this EVER Happened? When has this been successful? If you look at the Nordic People as a for instance understand they have the HIGHEST Rates of Hate Crimes in Europe and they also had one of the Largest Nazi Parties during WWII.
Everything you stated was just a fever dream.
Anonymous 9:26am:
I just came from the chess tables area where plenty of people are sitting, some reading, some eating, others chatting. Not everyone using that area is a "criminal."
The FACT is that there are only occasional and ISOLATED incidents of violence in the park, just as there are everywhere else in our lovely metropolis. We do NOT need a "crackdown" or an over-reaction as a response to them.
As for "covid" - that word is in quotes because that is what they call it. PLENTY of people have experienced illness and sudden death from the "covid" shots, which are NOT vaccines. (Do some research before commenting, why dontcha?) The point is that since "covid" mania took hold, the level of CRAZY in our city has definitely INCREASED. That cannot be denied.
It's like the 1980s again, only this time, it's not fun.
- Chris Flash
I was paying attention until “toxic mystery shots.”
People are so selfish. Sorry you want to live in a “cool” neighborhood but I hate junkies so move that sh*t out. Does anyone care that the delivery guy got slashed in the face? You’d care if you or someone you cared about got slashed. I can see there are lots or comments from ppl who have never been the victim of a crime or been mugged. Some of us have
Been living in the EV since 1980. Sure in the 80’s you’d get ‘mugged’ for whatever you had in your pocket, I even talked my way out of it a coupla times, but now it’s just violence because people are fucking insane.
Chris Flash, you are trying to defend the indefensible. Just stop, please.
Anonymouse 9:57:
I am not "defending" anyone. I am simply pointing out environmental factors that exist in NYC and what has contributed to them. And that CRAZY is in the air more so since 2020.
So, WHAT do you know about the slashing? The blood stains are on the sidewalk OUTSIDE of the park. HOW do YOU know it happened IN the park? WHERE do you get off assuming that "the chess table people" had anything to do with it?
There was an incident a number of months ago on Avenue A in which a big well-dressed guy was yelling at a smaller person who was not so well-dressed. Then he physically threatened and pushed the smaller man, who then slashed him and walked away. The bigger man immediately stopped his assault on the smaller man. I'm not condoning violence, but there is such a thing as CAUSE + EFFECT.
YOU have NO idea WHAT transpired before the slashing nor WHY it happened. Don't point fingers when you know NOT of what you speak.
I've been living in the East Village since 1989. Things were bad back then but I was stupid so didn't care. Thing have never been worse than now. I'm REVOLTED by the park; it's disgusting. Why do junkies matter more than tax payers? The city needs to help these people with housing and rehab. And the park needs to be OFF-LIMITS after midnight.
Tompkins Sq park has been always been an unsafe place; it’s much safer now than anytime in the past 50 years. Stop the hysteria.
Wrong.
That doesn't rule out the truth behind the other things he says. Ideas are not mutually exclusive. As a long time resident of the area I've seen it all. This is the lie of gentrification. The poor and mentally unstable are swept aside and policing is an absolute joke.
Thanks IzF, nice to hear from you. I know I feel safer now that fake heiress Anna Sorokin has moved into an apartment just off of Tompkins Square Park. Perhaps she can con some rich people into setting up a conservancy like they have in Washington Square Park to renovate the nasty bathrooms and clean up the needles and trash. Gentrification just hasn’t turned out the way it was supposed to.
@11:56pm: You write: "YOU have NO idea WHAT transpired before the slashing nor WHY it happened. Don't point fingers when you know NOT of what you speak."
I suggest you take your own advice: Stop imagining that YOU know everything that goes on in TSP. Other people have other knowledge & experiences that you know nothing of.
It’s true what people are saying here about gentrification, and it makes me wonder why the East Village is so different from other areas that have gentrified and and are cleaner and safer? You can go for miles on the West side from Battery Park up to 96th Street and not see any needles or areas that have been trashed. But here we have a park that is only three city blocks in area that is a nasty mess. Why?
Anonymouse 2:58: Unlike YOU, I use MY name when I post - what are you afraid of?
Unlike you, I do NOT pretend to know what happens in the park, though I do know most of the regulars in the park who tell The SHADOW what's up.
Like you, I do NOT know the circumstances behind the recent slashing, so, AGAIN, you ought not point fingers at anyone.
For your info, we shed BLOOD to keep that park open and free of restrictions imposed by shill "community" groups funded by and working on behalf of gentrifiers and real estate vultures.
So, whether you like it or not, that park is for EVERY body, from self-entitled mommy-and-daddy-subsidized frat brats to the homeless and everyone in between. That includes you and me.
- Chris Flash
(See how EASTY it is to use your NAME, like most adults?)
Chris, I agree with You 💯. You can lead the herd to field, but if they don’t pick up the ques, then there is nothing left you can do about it. Too many substances legalized that have clouded the brains of the masses. Made them compliant and unable to see the bigger picture. You can’t open the eyes and minds of those who have been programmed to be closed.
Post a Comment