Joan Roth is the scared — and angry — face of spiraling crime on the Upper East Side.
In three years, she’s been robbed and assaulted three times – part of what she says is a sign of the bad old days returning with a vengeance.
“I feel really angry,” Roth, 81, said. “I feel vulnerable. Our neighborhood has really changed.”
Roth, a photographer who has lived in the same rent-controlled apartment for 60 years, said her neighborhood has never quite recovered from its COVID funk.
“I don’t feel safe and I want to be safe,” she said.
Robberies were up a staggering 60%, from 138 in 2018 to 221 in 2023 in the NYPD’s 19th Precinct where she lives, NYPD data show.
Felonious assaults climbed 25% from 147 to 184 in the same span.
Robberies were down 5 percent in 2023 compared to 2022 but in the last 28-day period recorded by the NYPD they are soaring — 25% higher than last year, from 12 to 15.
In the first three weeks of the year, robberies were up 40% from 10 to 14.
Roth first became a crime statistic on Aug. 6, 2022, when she was beaten on a No. 6 train by a stranger.
She’s also been robbed at a grocery store and her local post office, where one of the thieves used her credit card to go on a shopping spree.
The subway beating happened around 4:30 p.m. at the East 68th Street station, cops said. The attacker was yelling incoherently, she said.
“I had just sat down and he pushed me off the bench and then he was hitting me and hitting me,” she recalled.
Everyone around her ran to the other side of the train in fear.
One woman urged the others to help her and a tattooed man jumped in and threw her attacker off the train car, she said, adding that the Good Sam didn’t stick around.
Jerome Gilliard, 65, was arrested soon after and charged with assault as a hate crime based on her age, cops said.
He had 61 prior arrests, including rape, assault, and drug possession, police sources said.
Then, in June 2023, she was in Fairway Market on East 86th Street when a man stole her wallet out of her backpack.
“They charged up a storm,” she said, noting that the card was used to buy $1,700 worth of sneakers at a nearby Footlocker and unknown items at CVS.
When she realized the wallet was gone, she went back to the store and the manager saw the thief on video appearing to follow her.
“I was an easy mark,” she said.
She reported the incident to police, but said they told her it was merely a property crime so urged her to report it to the bank.
Roth, who’s on a fixed income, got her money back from the bank weeks later.
And earlier this month she was taken in a more devious scheme.
On Jan. 4, she was at the post office in her neighborhood when a woman ran interference for a thief by falling down in front of her.
“She fell down in front of me on purpose,” she said. “He reached over my body and into my bag.”
She immediately cancelled her bank card leaving the robber with nothing.
But the way the neighborhood has changed since COVID started in 2019 makes her cringe, she said.
“It’s not the same neighborhood,” she said. “It’s just terrible.”
