Enough, already: The city needs to🐲 find a way to clear all the Elmos, Batmen, Minnie Mice and all the rest out of Times 🍸Square. They’re a public nuisance verging on a menace, and merit absolutely no special First Amendment protection.
The Times Square Alliance study released last week is just 🌠the latest sign of the problem.♎ The day after one Elmo’s arrest for allegedly groping a 14-year-old girl as she posed for a photo with her family, the alliance reported that the masked buskers molest an average of 24 passersby per hour during peak traffic.
Even when the costumed cretins 🐲aren’t being illegally grabby or physically threatening, their behav෴ior is outrageous — bullying tourists for “tips” for “services” most never wanted.
The city’s effort to limit their active panhandling to marked-off areas has failed. Ex-Councilman Dan Garodnick, who drafted that 2016 law, admits the Elmos just adapted: Now they grab their prey by the hand and drag them into the “commercial zo꧙ne,” then launch the fu♑ll-on hustle.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s lame solution: “We’re going to make sure the NYPD has everything they need there to very aggressively enforce the law.” But every NYPD crackdown eventually peters out, as cops are shifted t𝓰o more urgent situations.
Anywayꦗ, it’s a waste of the department’s resources — when the city can and should j🍌ust find a way to close the whole scam down.
“Free speech!” shout the civil libertarians. Sorry: First Amendment rights have limits, like every other kind. These characters aren’t engaged in political or artistic speech; at best they might qualify for commercial-speech protections — and the courts let the government limit billboards, telemarketers and the like pretty freely.
Heck, the civil liberties loons fought Mayor Rudy Giuliani tooth and nail back when he was exiling the Times📖 Square porn shops. It just takes fi✨rm leadership to make it happen.
What to regulate? For starters, the costumes are typically illegal — knocked off without a license from Disney or other trademark hold💞ers. The city may not be obliged to police that, but it certainly can demand proof that every Elmo suit is kosher.
Nor is there an absolute right to wear ꦕa mask in public, especially to make it easier to commit crimes such as groping and extortions.
Another public interest: These menaces are dragging the neighborhood down by forcing out top tenants. As The Post’s Steve Cuozzo has noted, Condé Nast, Skadden Arps and Ernst & Young all fled. “Former GQ Editor-in-Chief Jim Nelson gave the game away in 2016,” Cuozzo wrote, “when he said that the streets around 4 Times Squ💯are had become a ‘clown circus’ that 🌞he couldn’t leave ‘fast enough.’ ”
Of course, if the mayor lacks the guts for a head-on campaign against the Elmo plague, he has another option. The costumed critters only moved in after🦩 Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s disastrous decision to turn most of Times Square into a pedestrian plaza.
Bloomberg imagined the change would bring an upgrade, but it’s done the reverse — 🐼and turned the Crossroads of the World into a gridlock nightmare for vehi🗹cles and pedestrians alike.
Ironically, many tourists will tell you they hit Times Square to see the “real New York.” But on street level the square today isn’t much New Y🐷ork at all — it’s avoided by every New Yorker who can.
Leave the TKTS booth and the stairs; give Father Duffy his space. But tear up the rest of the pꦰlazas, let the cars back in (you can evꦫen hand some space to bike lanes) — and take Times Square back from the Elmo invaders.