NYC deploys new task force to tackle Greenwich Village quality-of-life concerns

The city is launching a new interagency task force to tackle a range of street-level issues for residents living in Greenwich Village, from open drug use to illegal vending.

Mayor Eric Adams, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the heads of 13 city agencies along with the MTA announced the plan on Thursday, aimed at curtailing quality-of-life issues like retail theft and homelessness.

It joins a growing list of initiatives in a city that has seen steady declines in major crimes, but a pervading sense of disorder since 2020 as the number of crime complaints have increased.

The announcement is part of a city effort to address disorder by recruiting neighborhood volunteers to help coordinate city employees.

“ The days of the NYPD alone being charged with making sure quality of life and public safety is done, those days should be over,” Adams said at a news conference in the lobby of the NYPD’s 6th Precinct.

The Village Interagency Task Force will meet regularly with officials from the FDNY and the city's buildings, mental health, social services and other departments to identify quality-of-life problems and discuss how to address them.

“ Between government and our civic associations, this is figuring out which tool to pull out of the tool bag for the right situation,” Bragg said. “This is the recipe to move forward.”

The task force is the sixth one created across the city since 2023. It joins similar groups focused on specific areas: 125th in Harlem, Midtown West, E. 14th Street, the South Bronx and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.

Barbra Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance, sits on the Midtown West task force. She said the group typically meets twice a month and pressures agency officials to fix a wide range of issues, like broken street lights or construction netting that could potentially provide cover for drug use.

“ What we're trying to do is get the social service agencies on the same page, so that when you're working with someone, you're building on any prior successes,” she said in an interview.

Brian Maloney, who will help lead the Village task force, said he brought the idea to Adams last year.

“ While we know index crime statistics have declined, we also know 311 and 911 calls are skyrocketing,” he said. “Our community simply doesn't feel safe anymore.”

Residents and business leaders in parts of Midtown have reported seeing an improved quality of life because of a focused attention from the city’s special narcotics prosecutor.

Maloney said he hopes the citywide drug prosecutor will pay similar attention to his neighborhood and orchestrate higher-level drug busts that yield more significant prison sentences.

At Thursday’s news conference, Adams sidestepped questions about why the city has struggled to coordinate its agencies to address quality of life issues, calling for the help of volunteers.

Instead, he blamed the state’s criminal justice reform laws that are now five years old.

“We need stronger laws in Albany to deal with the revolving-door-recidivism issue that we're facing,” he said.