As a former contractor who had to do landscape maintenance in the Baltimore projects, the criminal element doesnt even wake up until noon, which is when our crew would leave and then do the suburban jobs.
I was a service tech for GE for 32 years, I always ran the calls in the projects as early as possible.
A limited search showed more rioting on the Upper East Side and Downtown vs the Upper West Side (though the City relocated homeless to Upper West Side hotels...). Interestingly, of settling on the West Side, Krugman said:
We went to the Village and said, Were too old for this. We looked on the East Side and I said, When the Revolution comes, these people get shot first. The Upper West Side was clearly our kind of place.