Some habits are hard to break.
“The Hub” in the Bronx was drug-riddled business as usual a day after a Post exposé on the armies of junkies and depravity consuming the commercial corridor.
Addicts openly mixed and shot up opioids into their arms and necks, sometimes spilling blood onto the sidewalk, in broad daylight when The Post returned to the area Monday. One may have even overdosed outside a Dunkin’ Donuts.
Many junkies were passed out on benches in Roberto Clemente Plaza, where the dealers brazenly peddled their wares — with seeming impunity and without any increased NYPD presence.
The Post’s reporting prompted the Rev. Ruben Diaz Sr., a former Bronx councilman and state senator, to plead for President-elect Donald Trump to step in and fix The Hub.
“The shocking show that just won’t end,” he tweeted. “I am calling on @realDonaldTrump to please come back to the boogie down Bronx and help our senior citizens and residents In (sic) general enjoy our recreational areas.”
The desperate plea to the tough-on-crime incoming president comes as there have been years of sustained — but unsuccessful — efforts to eradicate the drug-ridden problems that plague the “Broadway of the Bronx.”
‘A dumping ground’
The latest stab at cleaning up The Hub unfolded during October and November, when the multi-agency “Community Link Operation” saw NYPD officers and sanitation and health department workers address quality of life issues.
The effort led to 35 arrests, 150 moving violations and 25 criminal summonses, police said.
Department of Homeless Services staffers also saw 366 “active substance users,” 28 drug deals and put 47 people in shelter, City Hall officials said.
But seemingly nothing had changed by when The Post spent days in The Hub in late November and early December.
“It just, in my opinion, just got worse,” said Councilman Rafael Salamanca (D-Bronx), who represents The Hub.
Salamanca detailed years of frustrations, from former Mayor Bill de Blasio allegedly dropping the ball on a $8 million anti-overdose effort to the NYPD failing to crack down on dealers.
He’s supportive of their efforts but is concerned that the commercial center is over-saturated with social programs — ultimately ensuring that the area remains a haven for drug users.
“You have close to two dozen not-for-profits, giving out needles, providing substance abuse programming, giving out methadone, methadone clinics and you have an issue with homelessness in that immediate area, with homeless shelters, it’s a recipe for disaster,” he explained.
“When you over-populate a specific area with a substance abuse issue at that magnitude, you’re never going to get the results you want and that area is going to remain like that forever, until you start moving some of those programs out.”
Pedro Suarez, executive director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District, also wonders if the substance abuse clinics could be more spread out, although – like Salamanca – he broadly supports their work.
He said the larger issue is that addicts are being squeezed out of many other New York City neighborhoods, and few neighborhoods have the appetite to host services for them.
“It almost feels like the South Bronx becomes a dumping ground,” he said, before insisting he “wouldn’t directly blame” the substance abuse service providers.
Volunteers at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction routinely hand out syringes, bandages and event drug paraphernalia, such as distilled water, bottle caps and cotton wool in their efforts to protect addicts from overdosing, HIV infections and other side effects of their dangerous habit.
However, Steven Hernandez, the group’s chief of staff, said outreach services follow the addicts, not the other way around.
He said The Hub has drawn junkies since the 1960s.
“The Hub is where everything happens,” he told The Post. “It’s where people go to buy their groceries, go to their medical appointments and go to the bank. And it’s also where people buy their drugs. It’s been like that forever.
“There’s always this chicken and the egg conversation around trying to blame outreach workers or harm reduction programs because ‘you guys are there offering services, that’s why the drug dealers are there.’ No, we are there because the drug dealers were already there,” he continued.
“Our goal is that our services are not needed and that we have to shut down.”
Additionally, The Hub may have many drug outreach services, but it lacks any brick-and-mortar substance abuse counseling services — forcing addicts to use on the street, Hernandez said.
Many locals, meanwhile, complained that the NYPD isn’t doing enough to crack down on dealers.
Those concerns were amplified by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), who in September sent Mayor Eric Adams a letter pleading for the city to crack down on the “open-air drug market.”
“When I went to see the drug hotspot for myself, I found myself in a state of shock not only at the severity of the situation but also at the lack of anything resembling a robust police presence,” he wrote. “It was a scene of lawlessness and disorder.”
Torres’ visit and letter yielded results, but only temporarily, said Siraj Bhaiyat, the owner of local variety store Willis Discount at Roberto Clemente Plaza.
“When Ritchie Torres came here around two months ago, the police came two or three times a day and there was less drug use,” he said. “Once Torres had been and gone, everything went back to normal.”
A designated group of NYPD cops patrol The Hub seven days a week, both on foot and in vehicles, a police spokesperson said.
Cops conducted nearly 1,200 narcotics arrests in the 40th Precinct covering The Hub as of December, up 20% percent from the same point last year, police said.
‘The police don’t care’
On a cold Monday, South Bronx resident Nyleen, 23, walked through the open-air drug market — a monument of poisonous persistence and the New York City government’s helplessness.
“It’s so normal to see people shooting up on the sidewalk around here, the police don’t even care,” Nyleen said. “It is normal in the South Bronx to see police walk past drug deals and drug addicts using.
“We have a new police precinct right over there,” she said, pointing to the NYPD’s new 40th Precinct building on the same block, “and they don’t care.”
The Post spotted no sign of any additional police presence and every indication of entrenched drug depravity.
On Brook Avenue across from the Horizon Juvenile Center, where the Post previously watched a man overdose and be revived with naloxone, addicts openly mixed and shot up opioids.
Five addicts sat on the sidewalk, where they had laid out grocery catalogs to mix their shots of heroin or fentanyl, applying distilled water and the drugs together into bottle caps. They drew doses into syringes through cotton wool.
One addict, who applied a tourniquet to his bicep before injecting, made a mess of his vein and drew a steady flow of blood that spilled on the sidewalk.
Another crawled on all fours with a long string of snot suspended from his nose before collapsing next to another addict preparing yet more shots.
Just around the corner at the Dunkin’ Donuts on East 149th Street, a man with mismatched shoes frothed at the mouth and collapsed unconscious before FDNY EMTs carted him away.
The Post could not determine if the man had overdosed or suffered an unrelated seizure, but Dunkin’ workers said addicts are often in the store.
“He was foaming at the mouth, then he was drooling, then he was shaking, then he dropped,” a Dunkin’ worker said.
“Maybe it was drugs, maybe he took too much.”
Bhaiyat, the variety store owner, said he believes police forcing the dealers out is the answer.
“If you get rid of the dealers, the addicts will leave too,” he said.
“The addicts are here because this is where the dealers are. The charities are here because this is where the addicts are. The addicts come here to buy drugs, not for the charities.”
