She reaps what she sowed.
A junkie horde has taken over an East Harlem block, brazenly shooting up and terrorizing businesses — right under the nose of a lefty city councilwoman who has cheered on woke harm reduction policies.
This week, The Post observed a half-dozen strung-out addicts shooting up less than 250 feet from Councilwoman Diana Ayala (D-Manhattan/Bronx) — East 116th Street office — with one woman shoving a needle into her neck as a young mother rushed past with her two young children.
“My son should not see that — it’s traumatizing,” East Harlem resident Donald Scott, 59, told The Post, adding he and his 16-year-old child have repeatedly “stepped over dead bodies” across their neighborhood.
“If [Ayala] is letting this go on, she should pay for my son’s therapy.”
East Harlem residents say their neighborhood’s daily horror show has worsened in recent years, in part thanks to the nearby OnPoint NYC overdose prevention center.
There, under the controversial idea of harm reduction, addicts are given clean syringes and paraphernalia, which they can use to shoot up outside or onsite under medical supervision.
Critics say this approach simply enables addicts, rather than treating their addiction.
Ayala quickly embraced the city’s decision to open the nation’s first safe injection site in 2021 just outside her district, which then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and other lefty pols promised would help address the spiraling opioid epidemic.
“She’s very sympathetic to [addiction], and my feeling is ‘Why do you think we have to live like this?’” said resident Jenny Scobel, 69.
“I can’t walk out my door and see somebody in between cars shooting up in their leg or their neck.”
OnPoint has received $1.38 million in taxpayer funding earmarked for programs to prevent and treat opioid abuse, although it has said it relies on private funding because it is not legally allowed to use public funds to operate an overdose prevention center.
Ayala also has provided trainings in her district on how to use the overdose reversal drug naloxone and, as head of the council’s General Welfare Committee, introduced legislation in 2022 to pay drug users up to $10 a day to return their spent needles.
Earlier this month, she griped how it is “insane” she has had to go out and pick up used sharps littering the community and called on the city’s Health Department to implement her proposed buyback program, which the council approved.
Residents said police’s efforts to curb public drug use have been minimal.
In 2021, NYPD brass ordered cops to effectively let addicts to shoot up in public after Albany decriminalized the possession and sale of hypodermic needles.
“The police come once, twice a day, the drug users move, but then come back,” said Laura Medellin, 49, co-owner of the Arcoíris thrift store on East 115th Street, where needle-wielding addicts are regularly seen shouting and fighting outside, and have even shattered their building’s window.
“A lot of customers don’t come here because they feel afraid.”
In the 25th Precinct, which covers East Harlem, major crime has soared more than 12% so far this year compared to the same period in 2023, even as mayhem citywide has dipped 2%, according to NYPD data.
Drug arrests have increased over 40% this year, to 511, compared to the same period in 2022, after the safe injection site opened, per police data.
Addict Katt Jensen, 36, lamented that the safe injection sites have been a magnet for dope pushers from outside her longtime East Harlem community.
“They know drug addicts go there, that’s what’s bringing [dealers],” she said.
Meanwhile, the overdose epidemic has continued to ravage the city.
An estimated 3,143 people died from drug overdoses in New York City in the 12 months ending in February, up 10% percent from the year ending in February 2022, according to the most recent data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
Yet even with the scenes of abject misery and human suffering, Ayala insisted to The Post this week that OnPoint has helped the neighborhood and reduced open-air drug use, instead chalking up the junkie horde on her block to the prevalence of drug dealers.
“Once you address the drug dealing, you see an immediate impact, and decrease in open drug use,” she said, adding she has requested additional NYPD officers to battle that scourge. “If we don’t address the actual dealing, we’re not going to see a decrease.”
Sam Rivera, OnPoint’s executive director, said staff at the safe injection sites have been used over 145,000 times and staff have intervened in over 1,500 overdoses. “[Drug users’] lives matter and we will continue to support their path of healing and wellness,” he said.
But neighbors have simply abandoned any hope that their urban nightmare will improve.
“I feel like they can’t control [the drug use],” said Sara Mercedes, 35. “I’ve been here for three years and I’m desperately trying to get out.”
Additional reporting by Jon Levine