Miranda Devine: Central Park crime surges — as NYC criminals cash in on class-action settlements

A woman was raped at knifepoint in Central Park at 8:30 Saturday night after being dragged off Fifth Avenue near East 66th Street.

It was the fifth rape in the park this year. Yet, instead of protecting women from rapists, the city is paying criminals up to $35.5 million in a class-action settlement. 

They’re even advertising for takers in the subway. 

“If you were held in Brooklyn Central Booking between April 8, 2017, to December 27, 2019, or in a Central Booking Facility anywhere in New York City between February 3, 2020, to March 1, 2023, you may be entitled to compensation,” say the giant yellow and black ads titled “LEGAL NOTICE. CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT.” 

“The City of New York has agreed to pay up to $21,500,000 into a settlement fund.” 

Anyone the cops threw in a city lockup for a couple of hours can get up to $475 plus up to $120 in expenses as compensation for every time they had to share “malodorous” cells with cockroaches and rodents. 

Since the ads went up, the settlement has grown to $35.475 million after the city found more former jail cell occupants to whom they could give our money. 

Inundated claims 

On Oct. 23, US District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis added a supplementary order to his original June settlement approval, increasing the payout by a whopping 65% after notices started being placed around town and mailed to potential beneficiaries in July. 

Lo and behold, the city was inundated with claims “received from individuals whose names did not appear on the class list, and Defendants [generous city officials] conducted an investigation and determined that the class list was underinclusive.” 

They added another 76,630 lucky people to the group who might be eligible — for every one of the 170,000 times they landed in a cell. 

Exactly how many total potential claimants exist is not spelled out, but the lawsuit mentions “hundreds of thousands of persons detained in the City’s Central Booking facilities during the Class Period” and who were held “for at least several hours.” 

To be fair, the conditions do sound putrid. 

“Each cell contained one exposed toilet that lacked a seat, lid, or sufficient privacy partitions to conceal the user from his or her fellow detainees,” the lawsuit says. 

Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington on ‘Pod Force One.’ Subscribe here!

“The toilet rim and bowl, along with the surrounding floor and walls, were often covered with some combination of feces, vomit, urine and other excrement. 

“The toilets were frequently clogged and would overflow. The smell was horrific and overbearing.” 

The food was well below Cheesecake Factory standards, too. 

“If sandwiches were offered, they were moldy, rotten, stale, or otherwise inedible. Some of the Plaintiffs and Class members were offered a small carton of milk . . . but were unable to drink it because it was spoiled or beyond the expiration date.” 

Such indignities surely offended the sensitivities of the pampered brats from Brooklyn Heights who rampaged through the city during the 2020 BLM riots and suffered no consequences, other than a short stint in a stinky cell. 

Now they can be rewarded for their suffering — doubly so since many already reaped $10,000 apiece from an earlier class action. 

These lawsuits against the city are now routine grifts. They exploded after Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty when he put then-first lady Chirlane McCray in charge of the city’s mental health initiative, Thrive NYC, which managed to waste $1.5 billion fixing nothing over six years. 

Joke’s on taxpayers 

There has never been any accounting for where the money went, despite the efforts of Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and Staten Island Councilman Joe Borelli to shame the city into investigating ThriveNYC over the six years it operated before the de Blasios left office in 2021, scot-free and unlamented. 

It is an ironclad rule of one-party rule politics that wherever there is an unaccountable spigot of taxpayer money, waste, fraud and abuse will follow. 

Thus ThriveNYC was a flashing neon light to fraudsters, grifters, chancers and profiteers everywhere that New York City was an easy mark. 

Payouts by the city in lawsuit settlements and judgments doubled from $970 million in 2021 to almost $2 billion in 2024, according to the city comptroller’s annual reports. 

It is a giant money-go-round that puts money in the pockets of the right people in the right law firms and the right nonprofits. 

“There is a deliberate and coordinated effort to funnel tax dollars to progressive-aligned activist organizations, and these outlandish settlements are a major corridor for it,” says Queens Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino. 

“This is why these groups are always flush with cash. Meanwhile, our city needs billion-dollar bailouts, tax hikes just to keep the lights on.” 

The joke, as usual, is on the taxpayer since no matter how many people apply for this latest payout, the lawyers get a guaranteed $2.95 million on top. The city also has to pay the administrator, Philadelphia claims administration outfit Angeion Group, up to $500,000. 

To rub salt into our wounds, the lawyers — Giskan Solotaroff & Anderson, Richard Cardinale, Scott Korenbaum and Bergstein & Ullrich — have come back to the trough for more. 

Judge Garaufis’ supplemental order last week says the city has “agreed to enter into negotiations as to Class Counsel’s demand for additional Attorney’s Fees.” 

The man who signed off on the deal is Mayor Mamdani’s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Steven Banks, who has been in the job since February and previously spent three decades at the Legal Aid Society launching lawsuits against the city (with a stint working for de Blasio as head of the Department of Social Services). 

So the city’s lawyer and the lawyers suing the city are on the same side, and New Yorkers are stuck with the bill.

TDS is real!

Ousted White House press secretary Katie Zacharia this week accused the press gallery of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” 

Now we know the ailment is real, according to a new poll released Wednesday by psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman. 

The national survey of 1,250 registered voters by TechnoMetrica/TIPP found 53% of Democrats admit to suffering from TDS. And in an ominous sign for the midterms where the president has asked voters to pretend he is on the ballot, 35% of Independents, and 25% of Republicans have TDS.

More than one third of voters say they know people who suffer â€œa great deal [of] emotional stress, anger or agitation in response to appearances or events involving Donald Trump.” 

Refusing to socialize with friends or family who like the president is the most frequent symptom observed by 41% of respondents.  

“Obsession with Donald Trump and simmering anger towards those who might like him” scored 38% and threatening or violent behavior rated 22%.

Lieberman wants to include TDS in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

A realignment in Upper Manhattan?

It’s impossible to miss Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s face beaming out of video screens all over the city. “Voting is easy and safe,” is his latest message you can’t escape. “You don’t need to bring anything with you to the polls. We’ll even give you a pen.”  

In other words you don’t need ID, and ICE won’t be there to catch you if you cheat.

“Does that mean we don’t need to bring our brains to vote either?” quips Caroline Shinkle, the energetic 33-year-old Republican lawyer running for Jerry Nadler’s old seat.

“IDs to shovel snow, but no ID to exercise one of our most sacred rights as American citizens… It is this type of nonsensical thinking that has prompted so many lifelong Democrats to cross the aisle to support me.”

NY-12, straddling the Upper West and Upper East Sides, is one of the most liberal House districts in the country.

You’d think a Republican wouldn’t have a chance, but Shinkle says there’s a “huge realignment” against Democrats among voters in the most Jewish district in America.

What have they got to lose?

The post Miranda Devine: Central Park crime surges — as NYC criminals cash in on class-action settlements appeared first on New York Post.