Greenwich Village:
crime takes over
By Tom Mathews
Newsweek Feature Service
NEW YORK-Once, the great outpost of the permissive society
was Greenwich Village, an entrancing area of Manhattan bounded
by Houston Street, 14th Street, Broadway, the Hudson River and
a touching belief in the sanctity of the lawbreaker.
But through the years, the great-granddaddy of all street crime
waves has engulfed the live- and-let-live atmosphere of the old
neighborhood. So of late, Village liberals, and radicals as well,
have begun to react just like any other citizens who safety and
property are menaced.
Villagers are forming block associations to fight back against
the muggers, robbers, rapists and occasional murderers on their
streets. They are talking of organizing vigilante groups. They
have even gone to the extreme point-for people who once
equated the law-and order issue with backlash-of supporting their
local police.
"The community is coming around," says Inspector Salvatore
Matteis, commander of the local precinct. "The first sign of
change came when we started getting more reports of crime. In
the past, these people just wouldn't report crimes very much.
Now we're getting so much cooperation it's amazing.""
Last year, the rate of robberies in the Village increased by a
thunderous 89 per cent This year, there have already been more
than 700 robberies, 1,500 burglaries, some 25 reported rapes and
six murders.
With the crime wave has come a change in life-style for many
Villagers. Old people, who know that they are the easiest targets
for robbers, no longer sun themselves in Washington Square Park
Shopkeepers, who used to stay open for the lively evening
crowds, now close up and barricade their stores at sundown..
Middle-class parents do not allow their children to walk home
from school alone.
"My son has been held up and robbed three times in the past
year," says a Village identist who has lived in the area for 20 years.
"When I first moved here, this was the nicest place in Manhattan
to bring up children.""
Drugs are the major source of the problem. But even without
the thievery of the addicts, the drug cultural brings its own deterioration.
Take the case of the Haven, a Shendan Square . after-hours
spot which billed itself as "the ultimate teen-age club.1"
Originally, the site of the Haven was occupied by the Downtown
Cafe Society, a well-known club of the postwar era. According to
one lady who has lived a few doors away for the past 20 years, it
has been all downhill ever since.
"When Cafe Society left, Murder, Inc., took over the place,
she says. "Even they were better than the Haven. As least they
wer quiet Then there was an off-Broadway theater, then a
discotheque called Salvation and finally the Haven.
"Nuisance is a euphemism for what the Haven was. It opened
at 9 p.m. and stayed open until noon the next day. The kids
would come in from Westchester and New Jersy. They had
money and fancy cars, and in the morning we would see them all
zonked out
"It was a horrible sight They used the vestibules in the
neighboring buildings for johns. In the morning, you would come
down and find urine, feces, vomit, glassine envelopes and maybe a
hypodermic syringe in your halL
After a collection of 300 signatures on a petition, intercession
by the local congressman and an investigation by the state
Attorney General., the place was finally closed down this
summer. But it took a year of hard pressure to get il closed. And
there are still similar, if smaller, clubs operating in other parts of
the Village.
Turn tc page 10.
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