A police crackdown has driven some predatory ticket vendors out of The Battery, but they haven’t gone far, complain locals.
BY COLIN MIXSON
The Battery’s aggressive ticket vendors are fleeing the park following a recent crackdown by the NYPD — but they haven’t gone far, and now they’re plaguing the nearby “tourist corridor” along Whitehall St., according to local community leaders.
“You’re starting to see them along Whitehall Street near Beaver. I think they’re just moving away from the edge of the park,” said Patrick Kennell, president of the Financial District Neighborhood Association. “It’s a huge tourist corridor, so that’s a huge place to pick up tourists.”
The ticket vendors preying on unwitting out-of-towners Downtown have become notorious following several assaults — including one slashing amid a disagreement between rival ticket gangs near the Whitehall Ferry Terminal, and an altercation that sent a tourist to the hospital with a concussion — prompting the crackdown that began last month.
The police sting netted 21 suspects, who will face charges of fraudulent accosting after selling tickets to ferries they claimed would make stops at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but instead merely circled the harbor and then returned, according to a New York Times report.
Those charges barely scratch the surface of the various cons and crimes the ticket vendors have been accused of, which range from selling tickets to the (free) Staten Island Ferry for several hundred dollars and physically assaulting tourists who decline their offers.
Additional security measures are coming to The Battery sometime next year in the form of a seven-day Park Enforcement Patrol, thanks to $5.3 million of increased funding for Fiscal Year 2017 that will provide for a PEP substation at the park, according to a letter sent from Parks commissioner Mitchell Silver to Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
In light of that measure and the possibility of future NYPD crackdowns, the ticket sellers are expected to diffuse further away from the park and deeper into surrounding neighborhoods, according to Diana Switaj, director of planning and land use for Community Board 1.
“It’s going to force them into other areas,” Switaj said.
The Council is taking steps to tame the ticket-vending trade with a bill backed by Councilmember Margaret Chin and introduced by Councilmember Daniel Garodnick in the works that would force the ticket sellers to obtain licenses and empower the Department of Consumer Affairs to determine where the ticket peddlers can operate, in addition to giving NYPD the authority to relocate the vendors if necessary.
The licenses, which would have to be renewed annually for a $125 fee, could be revoked by the Department of Consumer Affairs for violating any of a long list of rules against unsavory tactics, including fraud and aggressive sales pitches.
