Residents of Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood are outraged at harm-reduction groups that hand out drug paraphernalia on the street and attract a dozen heroin and crack users each week, some of whom use in public.
The group, which receives millions of dollars in funding from the city and the George Soros Foundation, distributes free needles, crack pipes and even equipment for “cooking” heroin every Wednesday above the entrance to the Clinton-Washington Avenue subway station on the C line.
“They’re giving out shots,” Stephanie Cole, who lives next to the subway, told The Post.
She said she sees people “smoking crack and stuff” using pipes given out for free by Vocal-NY organizers. “I’ve walked over broken crack pipes on people’s front porches and all kinds of trash that’s just been left there. Two weeks ago, I was sweeping up broken glass that had fallen into a pipe.”
Cole, 44, who works in social media and marketing, and others who live on Washington Street near Fulton Street say they are fed up with the open-air drug scene that Vocal-NY’s activities have created.
“They’re attracting a lot of people into the neighborhood who use drugs,” Cole said.. “There’s a cumulative effect of needle exchanges turning this into a hangout spot.”
Nate Taylor, a peer educator with Vocal-NY, attended a syringe distribution event in Clinton Hill on May 22 and claimed the group (which runs syringe exchange programs in Downtown Brooklyn, East New York, Crown Heights, Coney Island and Brighton Beach, according to its website) got into trouble while distributing syringes in Sunset Park when someone fired a gun and police were called out to warn them.
“[Someone] “I shot a few shots and I can’t work there anymore,” Taylor told The Post, but now, “I can go back and have fun. I go back every Monday.”
In a Clinton Hill handout, an East New York woman who identified herself only as Nikita said she regularly stops by on Wednesdays to buy a new crack pipe, or “a stalk of indulgence,” as she calls it.
When asked if she planned to use the pipe immediately after receiving it, Nikita told the Post: “It’s still early in the morning, so I’m going down the block.”
Miguel, from the Bronx, showed up on the street to get clean needles, but said he didn’t want to use them in front of his family at home, and instead planned to use them at a nearby pizza place.
“They do it in the bathrooms of pizza places,” Miguel told The Post. “No one knows what they do there.”
At Barclays Pizza & Pasta on Fulton Street, diagonally across from where the needles are being handed out, a counter worker said of drug addicts: “I don’t like them. They buy a pizza and sit there for two or three hours. … But we don’t have bathrooms. We tell them we’re closed right now.”
Nikita said others sneak into the Clinton-Washington subway station to use the service. “You have to be afraid the police are going to show up,” she said. “Everyone at the station is complaining.”
The Post has reached out to the NYPD about this incident.
Another resident on the same block, who did not want to be named for privacy reasons, told The Post that he saw needles and syringes strewn on the ground near his home..
“In addition to distributing supplies, our outreach teams have been hard at work cleaning up our outreach locations,” Alyssa Aguilera, co-executive director of Vocal New York, told The Washington Post.
Neighbors told The Washington Post they’re especially frustrated because the area is family-oriented.
“There’s a lot of kids coming through this area,” Cole said. “There are two schools within a block and a half in either direction.”
Cole added that he sympathized with drug addicts, saying: “We have a problem with them doing drugs in residential areas and near schools. Want a clean needle? Fine, but don’t inject on my front porch.”
The three-bedroom apartment in the Cole building is now Available on StreetEasy for $4,500.
“The methadone program is coming up soon. There are a lot of users here and we’re trying to provide services to them,” said Taylor of Vocal-NY.
As for where their clients are doing drugs after receiving the supply, he said, “They do it wherever….when we give them drugs… [the kit] For them, it’s their responsibility.”
“They’re coming for the syringes,” said a drug user named Domingo, who seemed to feel some sympathy for the locals.
“This is a great neighborhood, but I know, honestly, people here hate us,” he told The Washington Post. “I get it. If I wasn’t using drugs, I probably would feel the same way.”
According to its website, Vocal-NY is a “grassroots membership organization that empowers low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, and homelessness to create healthy and just communities.”
The 510(c)3 tax-exempt organization has received $3.5 million from the City Council to cover ongoing expenses from 2014 through 2024, and is set to receive at least $1.6 million under its city contract.
Some of that funding was allocated despite Queens Borough Councilman Robert Holden calling for the funding to be halted after a convicted sex offender affiliated with Vocal NY launched an anti-Asian racist tirade while testifying before the City Council in 2021.
In 2022, $2.95 million was allocated to help buy the group’s headquarters building at Douglas Street and Third Avenue in Brooklyn, a budget line item sponsored by current Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
Reynoso’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has allocated $800,000 to Vocal-NY between 2020 and 2022, while the Ford Foundation donated $600,000 between 2018 and 2022.
Additional reporting by Matthew Sedacca
