A residential street in The Bronx has become a regular haunt for homeless heroin addicts who shamelessly shoot up and masturbate in broad daylight, just a stone’s throw from the county courthouse and Borough President Vanessa Gibson’s office, fed-up neighbors told The Post.
Glass from broken bottles and shattered syringes crunched beneath the dress shoes of attorneys walking along the stonewalled western portion of Franz Sigel Park last week, as they made their way down Walton Avenue toward the Bronx County Courthouse on nearby Grand Concourse.
“This neighborhood is barbaric,” said a Walton Avenue resident who asked to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation from drug dealers. “The stairs to the park are covered in graffiti, sh-t and piss. Everything’s rotting and everyone’s suffering.”
Drug baggies, soiled clothing items, fast food containers, discarded mail, human feces and used condoms littered the sidewalk, along with an inflatable Christmas decoration — and nine vials of blood.
Someone had dumped the vials and dozens of used needles in a tree bed, not far from the remnants of abandoned encampments in the woods.
“You call 311 to report what’s happening, and they relay it to the cops, who soon after close the case, citing ‘No evidence,’” added the resident, who’s owned his apartment since 2012. “You’ve got kids walking on these sidewalks and dogs.”
Over the summer, a junkie was filmed masturbating while standing outside a woman’s parked car. “She was basically trapped in there, horrified, and just waited for him to leave.”
“I’ve seen people screwing in the park in the woods, on benches touching themselves,” said a different neighbor last week. “These derelicts will be out here, getting high, and these lawyers are parallel parking their cars as they’re shooting up.”
The street was quiet prior to the pandemic, and the situation has been ignored and slowly worsened.
The Post saw a disheveled man crouched behind a car, about to get high. He stopped and quickly stood up when he spotted a Post photographer. There was a large, infected injection wound on the top of his right hand, which had swelled to twice its size.
“I fell,” he said when asked about the open sore before shuffling away.
The city Parks Department said, “Our primary goal is to keep our Parks clean while ensuring that parkgoers are safe. That is why our staff is specially trained to remove and properly dispose of discarded needles.”
The Sanitation Department was also out on Walton Avenue last week, sweeping up the trash-strewn sidewalks. A Hazmat crew had to be called in later to clean up the blood vials and exposed needles.
“The Sanitation Department is so responsive,” the resident told The Post. “But it really is a cycle where, they come in, take all the garbage away, and it gives the homeless a clean slate to mess again.”
Residents said they’ve contacted Gibson’s office about the ongoing situation, and have taken their complaints to Community Board 4 with their complaints, only to see nothing change.
Gibson told The Post, “We take quality-of-life issues and the safety of our residents very seriously and are in active communication with the NYPD, the NYC Department of Sanitation, and NYC Parks regarding these concerns.”
One resident is tired of looking the other way.
“The police in the 44th [precinct] once told me, ‘Don’t look at it,’” said one resident. “How are you going to have all this sh-t going on right near the courthouse?”