Drug dealing has been a part of park life for as long as most people remember. Laws and mayors and tourists and students have come and gone, but the same people still show up, day after day, to hawk their wares to park patrons. Recently, Mayor Giuliani has been making an especially punitive and well publicized effort to rid the park of drug dealing. Since then the Mayor has been true to his word, at least in spirit. A permanent police substation now operates out of a parked trailer on the south side of the park.
Surveillance cameras sit atop the park's lamp posts.
Barricades enforce a midnight curfew. More police officers are now assigned to the park, and their patrols are more frequent. The penalties for dealing in the park were increased and are advertised on new signs at the park's entrances. Many citizens are outraged by these crime-fighting tactics which they see as threats to civil liberties and the rights of the public. Last spring, at a rally against the security cameras sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union, speakers complained that the Mayor's policies threaten personal privacy, misuse public property and trample individual liberties, among other charges.