After a Federal Raid, Washington Square Park Grows Quieter

Residents and park goers grapple with the future of the park 

By Audrey Hill

In the months following an October 2025 federal drug raid of Washington Square Park, park goers and residents alike have noticed a decrease in drug activity, as well as fewer unhoused people and increased police presence in the park – changes welcomed by some and greeted with skepticism by others.

The raid, which was led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and resulted in the arrest of 19 people, was centered on the northwest area of the park. Conrad Fried, a neighborhood resident, said that he would often see people doing hard drugs in that part of the park. “But these days,” he said, “it’s empty.”

A member of a local mutual aid group who asked to remain anonymous, credits the raid and the ensuing increased police presence in the park – including the temporary establishment of a mobile command center – for the alleged disappearance of unhoused people from the park. “It seems like they are expelling homeless people,” he said. “We do not have the same number of community members that show up as we did before this raid.”

To the mutual aid organizer, who has been providing food and resources to the park’s unhoused population since 2020 through the organization “Washington Square Park Mutual Aid,” what’s happening in the park is a reflection of larger issues with how society treats homelessness. “There are people who are in extreme need and being deprived of a lot of their basic needs,” he said, “It’s very open, it’s very in front of us, and we have this sort of blindness towards this, and the tendency to step over people who are in distress.”

Rodney Harrison, who plays and teaches chess in the park where he goes by “Mr. Black,” said that he has noticed more police activity since the raid.  He said that he and some of his fellow chess players in the southwest corner of the park are often the target of police harassment, despite having no connection to the drug activity the raid has targeted.

Some residents, however felt more positively about the raid and the changes in the park. Gilda Cote, who has been selling her art in the park for three years, said that while she hoped the unhoused people had been connected to needed services, having them and the people using drugs out of the park was a bit better for business, though she did have some reservations.

“In some ways, it is good because it’s keeping the park clean, so to speak,” Cote said. “However it felt like it scared tourists away because you know, they’ll bring the cop cars into the park, and who wants to be here trying to enjoy the scenery when the patrol cars are here?”

Nicole Philippidis Sanz, another neighborhood resident, said that the presence of drug users as well as the alleged drug-dealing operation so close to her home made her feel unsafe, especially when taking her son to school. It’s been a problem that first became noticeable around the time of the pandemic, but it became “unbearable” just as things were starting to return to normal. “We were just overrun by dealers and addicts, and our block seemed to be the ‘go to’ place because of proximity to the park,” she said.

Philippidis Sanz described people in a zombie-like state wandering the streets and shooting up on nearby stoops, people congregating around the scaffolding outside her building at all hours, and odd occurrences like a man wrapped all in saran wrap lying on a mattress outside her building.

Fried also said that since the pandemic, he has noticed people in the park and neighborhood who were clearly “out of it” and he worried for their safety as he often saw them crossing busy streets like Sixth Avenue. “They’re definitely not on just weed,” Fried said, “You see people fairly often with needles and whatnot.”

 In New York City, opioid overdose deaths skyrocketed over the pandemic, and the city only began to see a decrease in those numbers in 2024, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Unhoused individuals are particularly vulnerable, with accidental drug overdose causing 52% of deaths for the group between July 2022 and June 2023.

Residents near Washington Square Park said they have been complaining about people using drugs in the area for years, largely to no avail. Susan Ginsburg, who frequently attends community safety meetings held by the Sixth Precinct, said that the message from officials is often that their hands are tied.

Fried said that there have been multiple times when he has approached a police officer, including a time when he saw a woman passed out with a needle in her arm. He wanted to get her help, but was met with inaction. “They always just kind of looked at me like I was crazy like, ‘okay, what do you want me to do?’ ” he said. “I’m like, ‘well.. who else am I supposed to talk to or tell?’ ”

Kirk “Jae” James, a clinical associate professor in the School of Social Work at New York University, which owns a significant amount of real estate around the park, argued that traditional ways of achieving community safety – like arrest and incarceration – should be subject to greater scrutiny.

“Obviously people in Washington Square Park that live in the area want to feel safe and want to have a safe neighborhood,” James said. “We also have to acknowledge that the current tools that we have used to get there do not work. High rates of incarceration don’t work. If we incarcerate these people, they’re going to get back out, they’re going to be in the same position and come back and do the same thing.”

The mutual aid organizer echoed that sentiment. “You can arrest an individual, but the conditions that create that person suffering in the street are still happening, and police don’t address that,” he said. “They don’t address the conditions that create these situations and this misery.”

Fried and others had some hope that more holistic social policy ─ including the affordable housing and community safety plans proposed by the Mamdani administration ─ could bring about more deeply rooted change. 

“A community safety organization, that’s outside of the NYPD could be helpful,” said Fried, referring to the mayor’s proposed Department of Community Safety, which would dispatch social workers and other mental health professionals to handle certain non-violent mental health crises. “I think just having another option is important, because the police department has kind of a monopoly on the public realm.”

Though they had some reservations about the administration’s ability to implement policies, the organizer said that he too had some hope in some of Mamdani’s policies, particularly regarding housing. “I think if he puts the effort into it ─ you know that it’s not just all talk ─ yeah, it will make a difference.”