As crime falls, Central Park's night use grows

NEW YORK — For as long as most New Yorkers can remember, the rules have been clear: Enjoy Central Park by day. Keep out at night.

Someone, however, forgot to tell Fleur Bailey, a petite Wall Street trader who was walking her two Dalmatians in the park after 10 the other night.

"I can't remember the last time I came across something that made me uncomfortable," said Bailey, who lives on the Upper West Side and takes her dogs into the park as late as midnight. "Some people say, 'You walk your dogs where at night?' But I tell them that it's perfectly fine."

And she is hardly alone. On any given evening, the park now hums with life well into the night. Couples stroll under pools of lamplight, while the park drive pulses with the footfalls of runners, the whir of cyclists and the desultory clop of horse-drawn carriages. Men and women jog happily around the reservoir.

"It's boringly safe," said Christopher Moloney, 34, who cuts through the park at night, usually around 9, to get from his job in the Time Warner Center to his home on East 70th Street. "I've walked through the park at 3 in the morning, and there are always a couple of people here and there."

Crime statistics for the park show a steady decline in menace. This year through mid-December, according to the police, 17 robberies had been reported in the park, down from 37 in 2001 — and 731 in 1981. Rapes, too, are down sharply, with only two reported this year. The last homicide occurred in 2002. And many parkgoers these days have never even heard of the 1989 attack on the so-called Central Park jogger, who was raped and left for dead while running in the park one evening.

Efforts to tamp down crime have been so successful that the park's own police precinct has lately taken to planting pocketbooks on benches to lure would-be thieves. More than three-quarters of the 68 grand larcenies in the park reported through mid-December resulted from leaving belongings unattended, itself a sign of the comfort level of park visitors.

The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park for the city, initiated a late shift — from 1:30 to 10 p.m. — in the late 1990s, as the park became safer. In the past year, four more workers were added to that shift, for a total of 40. They do the usual tasks — picking up litter, inspecting bathrooms, recording broken bulbs — but, armed with cellphones and walkie-talkies, they also supplement the police as an official presence.