The weekend curfew at Washington Square Park is over, for now.
City officials confirmed to NBC New York that the 10 p.m. curfew instituted two weekends ago with no expiration date, has indeed ended.
New Yorkers filled the park late into the night Friday up to and past 10 p.m. following back-to-back weekends of early closures. Nearly one week prior, chaos erupted when police moved in to enforce the curfew. At least 23 people were arrested after hundreds of officers descended on the park.
"We continue to work with PD to find the right balance of education and enforcement against illegal and after hour activities that impact the park and the neighborhood," a spokesperson for NYC Parks said Saturday.
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The regularly scheduled early curfew that had been put in place for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, will no longer be the default. Instead, the park's closure will revert back to midnight with officials making a daily assessment of whether an earlier closure should be enforced.
But Friday was not the first weekend night without an early curfew. Last Sunday, one day after the arrest of nearly two dozen people, officers reportedly did not enforce a 10 p.m. curfew.
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The weekend 10 p.m. curfew came into practice as a result of raucous parties and loud crowds spilling out into nearby streets, according to city officials and residents of the neighborhood.
The NYPD made the decision to close the park early on weekends in conjunction with NYC Parks, citing problematic behavior which has included "jumping on vehicles, making threats to officers, throwing objects such as bottles and other objects at police and in one instance throwing unknown objects at responding FDNY and EMT vehicles which were responding to a building fire.”
