East Harlem residents are pleading with the Trump administration to do that there are no local leaders. For years, they closed down a controversial, safe injection site that was a magnet of crime and confusion in their neighborhood, the Post learned.
The grassroots organization East Harlem Neighborhood Group and One City Rising are appealing to U.S. Attorney General Pambondy to quickly shutter the government-supported shooting gallery.
“The situation in our daily lives has become completely unacceptable as a result of the opening of this facility in our residential area,” they wrote a three-page February 17 letter to Bondi. I wrote it on. The copy was shared with the post.
Along with the Washington Heights second site, the East Harlem facility run by a nonprofit, has been handling consistent outdoor drugs just outside the door since its opening in 2021, residents said.
“It happens every day in areas outside the facility and blocks surrounding the recruitment of facilities, and during the day, but drug addicts nod, lie on the street, beg for handouts, and commit small crimes.” Read the note.
“We need federal intervention to close it,” they wrote, repeating a petition by Republican Rep. Nicole Mariotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) to the U.S. Department of Justice last week.
The Post witnessed the mayhem this week. This includes a man who lets go of a laughing, $20 bill from a Hunchover Junkie, just 150 feet from the entrance to the East 126th Avenue facility across from kindergarten.
Two blocks below at the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 124th Street, a man in a North Face Jacket handed him a plastic bag containing a trio of white pills and about half of the weeds. $40.
An hour and a half later, a bearded man was seen strewn over concrete on Lexington Avenue near 125th Avenue next to his own vomit pool, depicting his disgusting looks from passersby.
“I thought it was supposed to be put to help people, but they're not helping – they're making it worse,” Barber Cole Brown, 38, told the Post.
“People are going there to get help, and they're buying drugs!”
But security guard Devon Frost said the program is good, at least for addicts who are given sterile needles.
Still, he added:
In November 2021, then Bill de Blasio celebrated the country's first government-supported “overdose prevention centre” in East Harlem and Washington Heights. Tools used both inside and outside the wall.
Mayor Adams announced plans in March 2023 for three safe injection facilities that will be in operation by 2025. No new sites have been opened since then.
Meanwhile, East Harlem residents lamented the hellish scenes that destroyed their community, noting that their complaints were ignored by local leaders.
“My sons walk by people who inject their feet into their necks, they walk by their feet, they walk by their bodies that are lying,” said the East Harlem Neighborhood Group's joint venture. said Chairman Elizabeth Jarrett Vancliffe, 55. The first neighborhood since 2004.
“This never happened before this injection site opened.”
According to a NYPD spokesperson, 311 drug-related complaints against addresses at East Harlem Safety Injection Sites rose 377% from just 57 in 2020 the year before the facility was opened, soaring to 272 in 2024. did.
Onpoint Executive Director Sam Rivera has advocated for the business of safe injection sites and noted that in addition to providing social services such as medical and mental health care, staff have intervened in over 1,800 overdose I'm doing it.
Health Department spokeswoman Rachel Vick defended the facility as providing “valuable community support” by linking New Yorkers to a variety of services.
Jarrett Van Clief warned that her and her neighbor's hopes for a change in neighborhood were run in 2023 when then Manhattan US lawyer Damian Williams was operating in a clear violation of federal law. When I warned that they did not close, I said they did not close.
President Trump's return to the White House made locals “cautiously optimistic,” she said.
East Harlem shelter Cody Diaz points to the White House this week to the disgusting traffic price tax this week, and the current administration has sought to shut down highly misused facilities. have.
“Everything is possible with Trump,” said Diaz, 42.
DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.
