Beware Crime-Ridden Times Square
IT was only a matter of time before a visitor was murdered in Times Square. That victim was Maria Ambrocio, a 58-year-old New Jersey cancer nurse who came to Gotham on Friday to lunch with a friend. Afterward, she and her friend were walking through the heart of New York when an alleged mugger, 26-year-old Jermaine Foster, running after allegedly having just robbed one woman in her apartment and another woman on the street, slammed into Ambrocio at high speed, knocking her unconscious; she died on Saturday.
Ambrocio’s death was a predictable and preventable homicide.
Times Square has been a mess for months. Last week, an illegally armed man accidentally shot himself while publicly urinating. The same day, a woman with a long record of similar violent, unprovoked assaults against other women shoved a stranger, another woman, into the side of a train, attempting (but failing) to kill her.
In June, four muggers attacked yet another woman, stealing her phone. The same month, a 16-year-old boy allegedly shot a Marine, whom he didn’t know, in the back.
In May, an illegal vendor with a violent history shot and wounded two women and a girl. Last November, a homeless man stabbed another man to death nearby.
I live just north of Times Square— and I avoid it. Friday afternoon, just an hour before Foster’s deadly crime spree, I went out of my way to steer clear of the area.
Yes, I know that the chances of any one person being a victim of a violent crime are low. But the chances that someone will block my way and attempt to “sell” me a
CD (read: try to scare me into giving him money), or that I’ll have to quicken my pace to avoid a deranged person screaming, or that I’ll see someone shooting up drugs or that someone will make a crude comment — these are more likely than not, on any given trip.
Going to Times Square isn’t worth it. Statistics also show that the risk of becoming a serious crime victim is much higher than it was two years ago. Crime in the Midtown South precinct has soared in the past two years. Robberies have tripled since 2019; assaults have more than doubled.
Just like on the subways, crime has risen as foot traffic remains low. Daily walkers through Times Square are about 219,000, 42 percent lower than in September 2019. Everyone moving through it today, then, is at greater per-capita risk of violent injury.
Mayor de Blasio can’t decide whether this is a crisis. On one hand, he deems business leaders “unproductive” for being concerned about random shootings, stabbings, and assaults. On the other hand, he has deployed more police to the area.
The police have helped some: The NYPD, along with the feds, arrested eight men in August for running an open-air crack market. But this takedown took months of work and consumed scarce federal resources.
When it comes to low-level nuisances, the police don’t do much. Why would they, when anyone arrested for a low-level crime is quickly back out on the street?
Less than a month ago, police arrested Foster for sexually assaulting and stalking a woman just south of Times Square; he was released without bail. Did the governor, mayor and Legislature think that he was going to bide his time peacefully in Times Square after that incident?
Last week, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos said, apropos of the latest subway pusher, that arrests are “not working.” Wrong: What’s not working is letting people out of jail and prison, at least without strict mental-health-treatment and addiction plans.
To make an arrest that sticks, police must wait until “small” crime escalates and someone is severely injured. This strategy requires lots of good luck; good luck wasn’t available for Maria Ambrocio last week.
After months of escalating warnings, cCity and state public officials could have prevented Maria Ambrocio’s killing. Until they start taking concrete steps to reclaim public spaces, residents and visitors will protect themselves by staying away from places like Times Square — just as I now do.