With just a few days until the official beginning of summer and several incidents that occurred last weekend in Inwood, Manhattan, public officials and NYC Park Advocates called on the city to hire more security agents to patrol New York's green zones.

Geoffrey Croft, director of NYC Park Advocates, which strives to improve the conditions of public parks, urged the Bloomberg administration to "consider hiring – instead of firing – more uniformed officers to monitor parks."

According to Croft, "Because of the lack of security, over the last 9 weeks there have been 12 shootings which have left 5 people dead and more than a dozen people stabbed."

City Councilmember Ydanis Rodríguez (D-District 10) stressed that the public deserves to have security in their parks. "People who go to parks should be able to rest assured that nothing bad will happen to them."

Rodríguez said that, although police responded appropriately to the attack that occurred last Friday at the park in Inwood Hill, where a woman was raped, "we can't allow things like this to happen and only increase security after the fact."

In the same neighborhood, last Saturday and Sunday two more incidents occurred where one woman was sexually abused, and a second the victim managed to escape. Since then, 30 uniformed officers have been assigned to patrol the area.