NYC shelter near where migrant mob beat cops plagued with drugs, all-night brawls: ‘It’s a joke’
The Manhattan shelter near where a mob of migrants attacked two NYPD cops is a lawless zone plagued by open-air drug peddling and all-night brawls, neighbors told The Post Thursday.
Tourists and New Yorkers working in the area alike were shocked by the mayhem surrounding the converted shelter at the onetime landmarked Candler Building in Midtown, steps from Times Square.
“There’s drug dealing almost all day long,” said a worker at a commercial building on West 41st Street, where the rear entrance of the shelter is located.
“Tables with watches set up. You see stolen clothes coming in. At night you see fights going on in the street, people running around with no shirt on,” said the staffer, who asked to remain anonymous.
He said he even witnessed a a fistfight among the asylum-seekers around 4 a.m., which spilled out into the middle of the Midtown street.
“You see knives, big sticks being swung at each other,” the worker added. “All the buildings here are adding security, so there’s additional cost to the buildings.”
Locals and visitors said they’ve seen police on the block — but cops seem unable to stamp out the seediness.
“I’ve seen cops approach these guys at least three times over the past couple of days,” said Katie, a 34-year-old tourist from North Carolina.
“They’re not 10 feet away before another drug deal is going down,” she said of police. “You’d think simple logic would dictate that you arrest the ones dealing drugs, but apparently it’s not that simple anymore.”
The manager of a nearby building agreed.
“It’s a joke,” he said. “There’s no incentive for cops to make arrests because these guys don’t go to jail and there’s no incentive for these guys to stop selling drugs.”
The building, which has it’s main entrance on West 42nd Street, is one of more than 200 sites that are now facilities for more than 65,000 migrants in city care, part of the more than 170,000 who have flocked to the five boroughs since the spring of 2022.
It became the symbol of migrant unrest on Saturday when more than a half-dozen rowdy asylum seekers ganged up on two NYPD cops in a shocking caught-on-video attack right outside the building.
The two cops, Lt. Ben Kurian and Police Officer Tian Zunxu, were trying to break up an unruly crowd outside the shelter when they were knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the head, according to authorities.
Seven of the accused cop-attackers have since been arrested — with at least one more suspect being sought.
A hotel worker from down the block said the lawlessness is non-stop.
“I observe these people loitering, begging for money, dealing drugs, drinking, getting into fights. I hear the scooter engines every f—ing minute,” he griped.
“Cops are here every 10 minutes but all they do is issue tickets that’ll never get paid because these guys have no money,” he added.
“Their guys just got beat up and the ones who did it are still out there,” he said. “I don’t see a solution for it.”
Austrian tourist Kristian Baumgartner, 29, said it “just isn’t civil.”
“I’m sympathetic to the population but obviously there’s got to be a better way to control the drug dealing and the violence,” Baumgartner said.
“People pay a premium to live here and stay in these hotels and see Broadway shows, and there’s got to be some legal parameter that prevents this sort of behavior,” the visitor continued.
“I feel like this crowd is giving asylum seekers a bad name,” he added, “because a lot of them do want to work and make advancements in this country.”
