Mamdani Dodges Central Park Safety Question After Fifth Rape This Year

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has refused to address a crime wave in Central Park after a woman was raped at knifepoint in the park on Saturday.Sexual assaults in Central Park have spiked 67 percent from last year to reach their highest number since 2021. There have been more rapes within the park — five — than by this time last year. And robberies are up 150 percent, according to police data, with 20 reported this year, up from last year’s eight. But Mr. Mamdani, who was in Central Park Monday to make an announcement about water drainage, launched into talking points when asked whether New Yorkers should feel safe in the park at night.“Every New Yorker should be able to walk anywhere in our city at any time of day, and they should be safe,” the mayor replied when a reporter questioned him about the rape. ”Anything less than that is not something that I will ever justify or accept.” The mayor pointed to recent data that total crime numbers across categories such as homicides and shootings are down this year, adding that “ we will always say that any instance of crime is one too many, and we have to be unrelenting in combating it.”“Every day we hear from the left-wing propaganda machine that New York City is safer than ever, while at the same time Central Park is sliding back to the dark days of the 1970s,” City Councilmember Joann Ariola said in a statement to The Sun. “The administration needs to crack down on what’s going on immediately, before it ends up becoming an after-dark no-man’s land again.”The rape on Saturday took place near the eastern side of the park at 66th Street and Fifth Avenue, at Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood, just after 8.30 pm, according to police. A man wearing black clothes and wielding a knife approached the 39-year-old victim and used the weapon to force her farther into the park. A passer-by alerted police to the ongoing attack, but the assailant got away and is still at large as of Monday. The assault was the fifth rape reported in the park this year, according to the police department’s crime database. It occurred one month after a 63-year-old woman was found murdered near one of the park’s gazebos. The day after the reported rape the NYPD confirmed the identity of the murder victim as Elise Bainbridge Hill, a longtime inhabitant of the park and the subject of the documentary Begging Naked. Her alleged killer, Jonathan Robles, 36, is being held on Rikers Island pending trial.

Mamdani Dodges Central Park Safety Question After Fifth Rape This Year

Mamdani Dodges Central Park Safety Question After Fifth Rape This Year

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