Dispute Among Battery Ticket Vendors Leads to Stabbing
In the latest outbreak of intermittent violence that stretches back almost a decade, a ticket hawker at the Battery, selling boat rides around (but not to) the Statue of Liberty, was stabbed twice on the morning of June 7, apparently by rival vendors who believed he was crossing into their territory.
According to an NYPD spokesman, “at approximately 11:19 hours, police responded to a 911 call for a male stabbed at 17 State Street, within the confines of the First Precinct. Upon arrival, it was reported to officers that a 26-year-old male victim was involved in a dispute with two unidentified individuals. A physical altercation ensued, and the victim was stabbed in the torso and shoulder. EMS responded and transported the 26-year-old male victim to NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue in stable condition. There are no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing.”
In a story first reported by the Daily News, the victim (whose name has not been released) was involved in a verbal dispute with another hawker, which quickly escalated into violence. Days before the incident, Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference that he had visited Battery in April, in response to a reporter’s question about the ongoing lawlessness among aggressive street salespeople offering “tickets to the Statue of Liberty.”
Such tickets are sometimes valid for admission to boats that tour the harbor, but these boats are often docked in Midtown, and the tickets are sold under the false pretense that they stop at the Liberty Island – and proffered at inflated prices, far above their actual value. In other cases, the tickets turn out to be worthless counterfeits. A third scam involves selling bogus, expensive passes to board the Staten Island Ferry, which is free. But the salespeople who engage in these transactions (often clad in official-looking uniforms) form a screen at the entrances to Battery Park, intercepting visitors before they can reach the only legitimate Statue of Liberty ticket seller, Statue City Cruises, located at Castle Clinton, within the park.
At a June 3 press conference, the Mayor said, “when we went down there… we didn’t see it. And so we need to identify the hours. And so we’re going to try to go back down there.”
“It’s unfortunately not surprising that the daily lawlessness in Battery Park has yet again resulted in nearby violence,” commented Mike Burke, the chief operating officer of Statue City Cruises. “We urge the City to do what it has done in other parts of town and once and for all eradicate this blight on the City’s tourism industry.”
City Council member Christopher Marte (who recently introduced legislation to toughen enforcement against bogus ticket sellers), said, “this stabbing is horrifying – but unfortunately, it’s not an isolated incident. For years, there have been repeated reports of harassment, intimidation, and even violence tied to illegal ticket vending operations in Lower Manhattan. These aren’t just one-off scams – they’re part of organized networks that prey on tourists, undercut legitimate businesses, and create real public safety concerns. That’s why we’ve introduced legislation to hold the companies behind these operations accountable. By targeting the source of the problem – the businesses that profit while others take the fall – we can protect everyone: consumers, neighborhood residents, pedestrians, and even the ticket sellers themselves.”
Tammy Meltzer, chair of Community Board 1, said, “this now-third stabbing among ticket sellers at the Battery is just the latest reminder that the ‘wild west’ of this industry continues, despite attempts to regulate it by increased enforcement. For years we have documented escalating numbers of assaults, fraud, and aggressive harassment tied to tour-ticket vending, but the problem just continues to get worse. That is why Community Board 1 worked with Council Member Marte and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to draft and unanimously pass a resolution in November 2024, calling on the City to require ticket sellers to be employees of the tour boat operators and to revoke their license and ability to operate when their agents break the law. Council Member Marte’s bill was introduced last week and we hope it will bring that accountability. We urge the Council to bring the bill to a swift hearing and passage so we can end the rampant violence, fraud and harassment on our streets.”
Jessica Lappin, president of the Downtown Alliance, said, “this incident reflects just how aggressive the ticket sellers in the Battery have become. They are illegally inside the park, and they routinely harass, intimidate and scam tourists and locals. We appreciate the additional enforcement that the NYPD has been doing and look forward to working with the City Council and the administration to take future action to rid Lower Manhattan of these ticket sellers.”
Nearly a decade of local history underscores the chronic nature of these concerns. In February 2016, a man and woman believed to be romantically linked, but who worked for competing tour services, became involved in a violent altercation, which ended when the woman attacked her erstwhile boyfriend with a stun gun. Later that month, another couple selling tickets attacked a tourist who refused to buy from them, fracturing his skull. That fall, a pair of vendors were accused of assaulting a tourist who refused to buy the tickets they were offering.
In the spring of 2017, police officers arrested more than a dozen sellers for offering fake tickets to unsuspecting tourists. In April of that year, gunfire erupted near the corner of Battery Place and Washington Street, arising from an altercation between two men who sold tour tickets. The shots were fired steps away from three childcare facilities, and struck one innocent bystander, a woman in her 30s who was wounded when a stray bullet hit her in the ankle. A second victim, who sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen, was a party to the dispute.
By 2018, ticket hawkers had refined their scheme by coopting the Connection shuttle bus, operated by the Downtown Alliance, as a prop. In this version of the ruse, ticket sellers would herd their victims (who had paid inflated prices for worthless passes to board the bus, which is free) onto the shuttle, under the pretense that it take them to a pier for embarkation. In fact, the Connection shuttle merely drove in a circle around Lower Manhattan. For several years, the Downtown Alliance was forced to eliminate multiple stops from the shuttle’s route, in an attempt to foil the scam.
A 2016 police investigation found that several of the companies that deploy ticket sellers to Battery Park made it a practice to hire people who recently had been released from prison, and were in many cases on parole or probation. Several of these companies, in fact, were run by convicts, and in one case, the enterprise was being managed by an owner while he was imprisoned at Rikers Island.