To curb crime creeping into the Manhattan cocktail scene, some bars are getting schooled.
A local business group is trying to help Greenwich Village-area bars keep their patrons from being robbed with a new accreditation and training program, dubbed Village Safe Spot, tackling safety protocols.
“People are coming out of establishments, and maybe they’ve been a little overserved and are … by themselves, and they’re getting pickpocketed,” Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce executive director Jesse Gericke told The Post.
The program could take as little as a few hours to complete as the chamber of commerce reviews a bar’s existing policies relating to crowd control, de-escalation, overdose response, accurate liquor pours, incident reporting and more.
Nightlife management trainings conducted by Safe Night LLC and design for owners and staff will be available to businesses in Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Union Square, Flatiron and Nomad.
“It’s really just formalizing policies if they don’t have an employee handbook,” Gericke added, noting the program also serves as a helpful compliance check for things like fire safety and ID checks.
Since the Manhattan program launched Tuesday, over a dozen businesses have expressed interest in participating – and a handful of those will be undergoing a training on Thursday.
The new program comes as bars and restaurants in Greenwich Village face increasing concerns over late-night thieves, bar staffers told The Post.
Year-over-year, robberies are up 1% and misdemeanor assaults are up 9% citywide, per police data.
“The way the city has been post-COVID, I do feel that safety has kind of gone down a little bit,” said Angela, a manager at Blue Haven. “The safety of our people, we’re a little more concerned about it … [there’s] just a little bit more riffraff out on the street.”
When asked if she thinks that a Village Safe Spot accreditation would draw more business, Angela said: “Probably. Everybody’s concerned about their safety, I definitely think there’s no harm in it.”
The neighborhood was hit particularly hard last year by thieves stealing patrons’ phones, a bartender at The Red Lion told The Post.
“This past summer – in June, July – we had a bunch of pickpocketers in this area,” a bartender at Peculier Pub told The Post. “We had one girl who had her phone stolen from right on the bar.”
This summer, a pair of moped-riding robbers stole a $100,000 watch from a man at gunpoint outside buzzy restaurant Carbone — days before another crook stole a $40,000 Rolex from a man a few blocks away.
Greenwich Village is the best neighborhood for the Big Apple pilot due to its sheer volume of nightlife businesses, Gericke said.
“We’re hopefully putting patrons themselves in better positions,” he added, “so when they leave establishments, they’re not targeted.”
