The NYPD has finally rid Times Square of the annual post-New York Auto Show gang-initiation violence that plagued the area for years, police sources told The Post on Tuesday.
Bloods and Crips took to Facebook and Twitter to alert fellow gang members that there were too many cops in the area this year and to stay away, the sources said.
“It was pretty much dead. It was really quiet this year,” said one source, noting that it felt “like Disneyland.”
Detectives from the NYPD’s Intelligence Unit, which monitors social media, learned that the crew members were instead going to congregate in Coney Island, Brooklyn, following the show, the sources said.
And gang violence erupted in a McDonald’s on Mermaid Avenue at around 11 p.m. Sunday. One man was stabbed to death while another was seriously wounded in the knife attack, cops said.
A law-enforcement source told The Post there were other gang attacks across the city that night, but no confirmed assaults linked to crew members in Manhattan.
Another factor in the decline of Times Square violence is that the show closed at 7 p.m. this year rather than 9 p.m. as in past years, the sources said.
“They’re not as drunk and they usually go home,” one source said.
Three gangbangers were shot and 54 arrested in Times Square on Easter, 2010.