NYC police step up patrols in Central Park after report of rape

• Police stepped up patrols in Central Park after a 39-year-old woman said she was raped at knife-point near East 66th Street on Oct 25.
• Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the attack “horrific” and said every New Yorker should be safe in the city at any time of day.
• The rape came amid fresh safety fears after other park attacks, but police said serious crime remains rare and total major crimes are about 55 this year.

NEW YORK – After a woman said she was raped at knife-point in Central Park over the weekend, police said on Oct 26 that they had stepped up patrols of the park as they searched for an assailant.

The 39-year-old woman told the police that she was jogging on the east side of the park near East 66th Street shortly before 8.30pm on Oct 25 when a man dressed in black approached her brandishing a knife. He dragged her into a wooded area, raped her and ran off, the police said.

On Oct 26, Mayor Zohran Mamdani was asked about the crime at an unrelated news conference at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Centre in the northern section of the park bordering Harlem.

“What happened to this survivor is horrific,” he said. “This is something that no one should have to endure. We know that every New Yorker should be able to walk anywhere in our city at any time of day, and they should be safe.”

The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment, the police said.

Her assailant was wearing a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants and carrying a black backpack, officials said.

It was the latest episode in the park that has raised concerns about safety.

A 63-year-old woman who lived in the park was killed there in September, and a 32-year-old woman riding her bicycle was hit in the head and robbed by three men who took off with her AirPods on Oct 18.

Given the tens of millions of visits the park receives each year, serious crime remains relatively rare there.

The total number of robberies, felony assaults, sex crimes and murders in 2026 is about 55, roughly the same as at this point in 2025 and slightly lower than at this point in 2024, according to statistics the police released on Oct 26.

The police did not immediately offer details on Oct 26 about the increased patrols.

The Oct 26 report of a rape followed four earlier rapes in the park in 2026. Police said they had made arrests in three of those attacks. During all of 2025, there were three rapes.

The attack also occurred a week before the TCS New York City Marathon, which draws thousands of runners to the city’s green spaces for practice. The marathon passes through the park, and the course comes within a few hundred feet of where the woman was attacked.

“We were sad to hear of this horrible incident in what is normally a safe public space,” Crystal Howard, a spokesperson for the New York Road Runners, the non-profit that organises the marathon, said in a statement. “We take the safety of our community seriously and work closely with law enforcement year-round to protect runners, spectators, volunteers and staff alike.”

On its website, the organisation advises runners not to jog alone or at night, but to stay in pairs or groups, in well-lit areas around other people, and to avoid headphones.

Katherine Marroquin, the cyclist who was attacked last week, said the city should do more to make the park safer. “They’re not doing a good job if that happened to me on a Sunday night and somebody else got raped on a Saturday,” she said. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.