Bringing it all back home
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“A lot of people are worried about [Times Square] collapsing. And unless they start getting it together for a rebuild, it might actually collapse,” said William Bratton, the NYPD commissioner who helped then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani clean up the area in the 1990s.
“We had a lot more to work with than the current commissioner and the mayor have in 2023,” Bratton added. “There was a lot more of a criminal justice system back then. The courts, district attorneys, and the police were pretty much united about doing something about crime in Times Square. So you had a collaboration that is not in place today.”
By contrast, “we [now] have a number of district attorneys not wanting to deal with a lot of … the so-called ‘broken windows’,” signs of social disorganization and lead to crime, he explained — referring to the far-left, soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who critics say is pushing “reforms” which favor criminals instead of victims.
“Until we get better collaboration between various elements of government, we’re not going to see it improve dramatically,” Bratton warned.
The lawlessness, vice, and depravity that ruled Times Square since the 1960s came to a screeching halt in the mid-90s, when Giuliani cracked down on crime and closed down the area’s notorious sex shops and peep shows.
The redevelopment plan then accelerated in the 2000s under billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who helped lure national store and restaurant chains to the new-look area and complete its “Disneyfication,” as some critics whined at the time.
I personally preferred the gritty Times Square of the 60s to the Disneyland tourist trap it became in the 90s (not the subways, though), but the place, though a bit wild, was safe; crazed, drug-addled individuals were fewer, and the completely unpredictable attacks on unsuspecting pedestrians that occur today didn’t happen then.
“Progressive” stands for progress — back to the future.
