Photo: Tiphanie Colon-Lamontanaro

Though St. Mark's Place is still lined with smoke shops and leather fetish stores, these now rub shoulders with trendy boutiques, bars and restaurants, drawing those looking for a good time or a cute dress. Avenues B and C, which until the late 1990s were known mainly for their drug corners, are now chock full of new apartment developments and entertainment venues. This gentrification brought a dramatic71 percent drop in major crimes in the area over the 17 years since 1993, led by a 91 percent plunge in car thefts, an 81 percent drop in robberies, and 77 percent declines for murders and burglaries.

There's still room for improvement, however, as the East Village and Alphabet Cityrank just 58th out of 69 neighborhoods for per capita crime in DNAinfo.com's Crime & Safety Report, even though the overall crime rate there fell by 9 percent in 2010. The area's crime rate of 182 incidents per 10,000 residents also places it as only the 12th safest out of 17 neighborhoods in Manhattan.

While the neighborhoods never lacked a solid bar scene, the influx of new lounges and clubs has brought with it new troubles.DWI arrests were up 600 percent since 2001, to 140. On Aug. 22, 2010, Devin Thompson, 37, was shot and killed during a fight outside the Sin Sin/Leopard Lounge, on Fifth Street. Residents complained that it had become a magnet for drugs, prostitution and drunken midnight brawls. It was eventuallyshut down.

Property crime still plagues the 9th Precinct, which covers the area and has one of the worst rates in the city for this category,ranking a lowly 61st. Grand larceny remains a problem even though its rate fell 6 percent in 2010, to 760.

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»Find out more about the methodology behind DNAinfo.com's safety rankings.

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Photo: Getty/NY Daily News Archive

Tompkins Square Riots Cement Gentrification Change

In the summer of 1988, Tompkins Square Park was completely taken over by homeless people, junkies and anarchists. With the hope of curbing the public health issues that their presence brought, the city decided to implement a curfew, an idea strongly opposed by the local population.

After a 1 a.m. curfew for the park was approved on June 28, the police began confining homeless people to a corner of the park off Avenue A and closing the park altogether at various times throughout the month of July. On July 31, at a gathering protesting the closings, six police officers were injured and four men arrested after cops responded to a noise complaint in the park. Tensions continued to mount, and on August 6, police met protesters who were holding banners that read "Gentrification is Class War." The scene exploded. According to some reports, the police lost control, clubbing protesters and reporters indiscriminately. Police horses charged the crowds, knocking people to the ground. Protesters threw bottles and smashed the windows of a new high-rise apartment building. The backlash against police was strong, and there were many claims of police brutality. But in the end, the park was cleaned up, the homeless encampments were dismantled, and rents skyrocketed in the area surrounding the park.