New York City stepping up distancing enforcement in parks

NEW YORK — Police officers will start limiting access to a handful of New York City parks whose scofflaw visitors have become poster children for bad social distancing, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday.

Users of the parks, two built on piers that jut into the Hudson River and one on Brooklyn’s East River waterfront, have been shamed on social media in recent weeks after images appeared showing mostly young people, without masks, sprawled on blankets without much regard for rules barring people from getting withing 6 feet of anyone they don’t live with.

To control overcrowding, de Blasio said, police will start limiting how many people can access the parks at a time and warning people they will be allowed to stay only for a limited amount of time.

“Why are we doing this? Because it saves lives,” said de Blasio, a Democrat.

The program will begin at Pier 45 and Pier 46 in Manhattan’s Hudson River Park and Domino Park in Brooklyn.

Images of the crowded parks, all frequented predominantly by white people, have often been used to illustrate a disparity in enforcement of social distancing rules.

Some people have contrasted the relatively hands-off approach police have taken in those parks to the more aggressive enforcement in gatherings of black people — in addition to the breakup of large public funerals in Brooklyn held by Hasidic Jews.

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office released data late Thursday showing that of the 40 people arrested for social distancing violations in that borough since mid-March, 35 were black, 4 were Hispanic and one was white. All cases were dropped.