More police, cleanups planned for East 14th Street in Manhattan due to safety concerns

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he's directing multiple city agencies, including police, to address public safety and quality-of-life issues along East 14th Street, after recent stabbings on the Lower Manhattan corridor spotlighted some residents’ concerns around crime.

The NYPD will set up a $1 million mobile outpost on East 14th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A to bolster the presence of uniformed officers in the area while improving coordination between the two police precincts straddling the roadway, Adams announced on Thursday.

The new command center is part of a broad initiative that the Adams administration is rolling out to tackle residents’ concerns, which also include drug activity and homeless encampments along the corridor. In addition to police, the interagency effort involves the city’s sanitation, homeless services and health departments.

It comes after a stabbing across from the Stuyvesant Town apartment complex killed a man and wounded two others in June.

“People must feel safe. … You cannot go to someone and give them a stat of how safe the city is if they feel unsafe,” Adams told reporters on Thursday.

The fatal stabbing on East 14th Street was one of two homicides within the 9th Precinct so far this year, according to the latest NYPD data. The second homicide, a shooting in July, occurred further south, in Tompkins Square Park, and left a man dead.

Police data shows that by this point in 2023 the precinct had recorded one homicide for the year. Gothamist’s analysis of shooting data from 2020 to June 2024 shows shootings remain relatively rare in the East Village.

As the mayor has touted declining crime across the city, he has also contended with the perception from some residents that the city is in disarray over quality-of-life issues, ranging from crime to cleanliness. While most major crime categories, including murder, are down citywide this year, some, including rape and felony assaults, are slightly up compared to this time last year, according to NYPD data.

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said on Thursday that police will be deployed to homeless encampments and illegal vending outposts around East 14th Street. Officials will also seek to close unlicensed cannabis shops and curtail retail theft, the mayor said.

Sanitation workers will service litter baskets three times a day and additional graffiti cleaners will canvas the area, Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. And workers for the Department of Homeless Services and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will conduct outreach among homeless people living along the corridor, officials added.

“We have felt for a few years now the pain of living in a block that you don't want to walk down to, that feels unsafe, that feels dirty, that feels out of control,” City Councilmember Keith Powers, who lives in Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, said at the mayor’s press conference. “It is a wake up call to many of us about how one block can cause a whole problem for your entire neighborhood.”