NOTE: Chelsea Community News is reprinting the following with the permission and encouragement of its authors.

BY THE COLLECTIVE MEMBERSHIP OF ADVOCATES FOR CHELSEA | We, residents and business owners in the low-20s blocks of Chelsea between 8th and 9th Avenues, call on the 10th Precinct of the NYPD, Community Board 4, and our City Council representative, Corey Johnson, to aid in addressing illegal activities that are making our neighborhood dangerous and that are compromising our quality of life.

We Urge These Actions:

• Remove or improve the neighborhood scaffolding that shelters illicit activities.
• Increase NYPD foot & car patrols.
• Remove the LinkNYC stations.
• Pick up trash more thoroughly.

Sign The Petition!

Visit Change.org/SaferChelseaNow

Neighbors report observing or experiencing:

• Open drug dealing on Eighth Avenue between 20th and 22nd Streets, beneath the scaffolding at 205 – 207 Eighth Avenue, and elsewhere.
• Muggingsand random violent attacks 
• People loitering & sleeping on the stoops and in the vestibules of our homes.
• Escalation in shoplifting, broken windows, and robberies at local businesses.
• Packages stolen from the lobbies of residences & businesses.
• Car & bicycle thefts.
• Attempted assaults & lewd behaviornear the elementary school, PS11, where scaffolding provides cover for such activity.
• Beneath that scaffolding people defecating, urinating, shooting up drugs, having sex.
• People apparently suffering from mental illness verbally harassing passersby, and worse.
• Drug dealing, prostitution, & fencing stolen property at local businesses.

While we understand that many of these problems involve entrenched and complicated underlying issues, the actions we recommend can go a good distance to making our streets safer. In the longer term, we urge our city to:

• Set – and enforce – a legal limit on how long scaffolding may stay up.
• Require all scaffolding to be brightly lit and open to the street side.
• Make drug and alcohol addiction treatment available to those in need.
• Provide the necessary medical, physical, and emotional care our neighbors on the streets need.
• Fully staff and properly operate the “diversion centers,” where police can drop off people experiencing mental health crises instead of escorting them to hospital ERs or jail.

Last year, the 10th Precinct received more than 29,000 911 calls seeking intervention in cases of narcotics sales, knife-wielding, assault, robbery, burglary, and other serious events. Our lived experiences of our own neighborhood confirm a significant and troubling rise in dangerous criminal activity. It must stop.

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