LES's 'Hell Square' is now an alarming hotbed for crime - New York Post

Hell Square is really living up to its name.

The Lower East Side’s notoriously rowdy nightlife district has seen an alarming spike in rapes and felony assaults over the past five years and is now so out of control, longtime locals are afraid to go out at night, a shocking new study reveals.

“I won’t even walk through the neighborhood. It’s so dangerous on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, almost every night. I mean it’s not just dangerous but it’s just offensive. I’ve never been called a f—-t more in my life than in the last three years in this neighborhood,” one 20-year resident told grad students from Hunter College’s Department of Urban Policy and Planning.

In the 7th Precinct — which covers the nine-block party zone bordered by East Houston, Allen, Delancey and Essex — reports of rapes have skyrocketed from six in 2013 to 17 in 2016, and felony assault reports rose from 106 to 148, even as both crimes otherwise held steady across the city, the researchers report.

And things don’t seem to be getting any better this year — the number of rapes and beatings in the precinct for 2017 are on par with the same period last year, according to NYPD crime data.

The surge in violence matches residents’ experiences in what is widely considered one of the most bar-saturated areas in the city — and “probably one of the most saturated in the world,” a member of the State Liquor Authority said in 2013.

The Hunter team surveyed 123 residents and conducted three focus groups in April this year, at the behest of local rabble-rousing group LES Dwellers, which is attempting to stem the onslaught of clubs and bars.

More than 65 percent of those quizzed believed rapes were up over the past five years, and more than 75 percent said there’d been an increase in assaults, with many residents describing some of the bloody brawls they’ve seen first-hand.

“There was this belligerent fight between some locals and some white guys here to drink in the neighborhood. The visitors were drunk screaming ‘get out of our country.’ Turned into a huge mob fight,” a 19-year resident said during a focus group.

The locals also say the area has become infuriatingly noisy at night — and covered with trash and vomit in the mornings.

One subterranean store owner described the ritual of scrubbing puke off the shop’s steps with bleach every morning in the summer.

“We get there at 9 or 10 in the morning and it has fermented, it has crusted, it has dried the stomach acid, it’s caked, it stains my steps for weeks after,” the shopkeep told the researchers.

Residents told the researchers they’d like to see the number of liquor licenses in Hell Square cut in half, more cops on the streets, and incentives to increase development and blue-collar businesses that can claw back space from the watering holes.

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