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Broadway Pastor Says Times Square May Need Divine Intervention

By Murray Weiss | August 31, 2015 7:29am
 Father Pete of St. Malachy's.
Father Pete of St. Malachy's.
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St. Monica's Church

MANHATTAN — Divine intervention may be needed to fix Times Square’s ills.

The Rev. Peter Colapietro, a veteran of the area’s “Bad Old Days” who just returned to take over the Broadway parish, said he was stunned to see the neighborhood overrun with a hellish “circus” of painted topless women, aggressive panhandlers and con men hawking stolen or fake CDs.

“For the city to put up with this stuff is unconscionable,” said Colapietro. “To have this sleazy stuff going on where there are kids, it should not be going on in New York.”

The popular pastor recalled his years as the beloved pastor of Holy Cross Church on West 42nd Street during the days when streets were awash in drug dealers, prostitutes and XXX-rated emporiums.

To avoid being mugged, “I would walk down the middle of the street talking to myself so people would think I was crazy so they would not accost me,” the 6-feet-2 priest said.

Back then the local clergy teamed up with area business executives, Broadway theater owners and civic leaders to create a "Midtown Citizens Committee" to work closely with the police and City Hall.

Together, he said, they brainstormed initiatives to helped clean up the neighborhood.

The ideas ranged from devising “horse diapers” for the carriage horses to catch their droppings (they are still in use) to seeking a legal technicality to try to shut down X-rated “Buddy Booths” where two people could squeeze into a closet-sized room “to do whatever they do," he said.

“We suggested the booths be closed because they weren't wheelchair accessible,” he said. “That one did not fly.”

Hearing that the NYPD is finally doubling its presence in Times Square and that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s has announced a task force to examine the situation, Colapietro suggested bringing back the Midtown Citizens Committee.

“Times Square is not bad yet, but it is sort of a broken windows thing, where one broken window is not bad but when you add them up, it begins to change the tenor of the neighborhood,” said Colapietro, who is now at St. Malachy's at Broadway and West 49th Street.

“I know some people say that all the colorfulness went out of the Times Square when it was cleaned up, but is it anyone’s idea that tripping over crack addicts and aggressive panhandlers is OK?” he asked.

“I am an open-minded person” the priest added, “but we have to be careful because right now, it’s a free-for-all, and not well managed.”