Discarded syringes litter the bottom on the Hub, highlighting the continuing struggles with drug use and public security within the space.
Courtesy of U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres workplace
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Used syringes and needles lay uncapped, littered all through a one-block stretch of the South Bronx that serves as a haven for drug sellers and customers alike. Positioned within the Hub, one of many borough’s busiest industrial districts, is an open-air drug market working across the clock — even in broad daylight.
For months, Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres has urged each Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul to show their consideration to the Melrose Avenue part of the Hub, the place a drug hotspot has emerged between East 149th Road and East a hundred and fiftieth Road.
Torres as soon as once more sounded the alarm in a letter to Adams and Hochul on Jan. 11, urgent them to completely dismantle the open-air drug market, which he says is having a resurgence.
“What the Bronx needs is not a short-term band-aid but a long-term solution to the crisis in the Hub,” Torres mentioned within the letter.
The borough faces the very best fee of overdose deaths in New York Metropolis, based on the Division of Well being.
The Bronx noticed 78 fatalities per 100,000 residents in 2023, greater than twice that of Staten Island, which ranks in second place. These within the South Bronx made up a disproportionate share of overdose deaths.
Torres, joined by group leaders, intensified his requires a drug market shutdown throughout a Jan. 13 press convention on the Third Avenue Enterprise Enchancment District (BID) workplace.
“The Mayor would never tolerate an open-air drug market outside Gracie Mansion,” Torres mentioned throughout the press convention. “The people of the Bronx are entitled to the same standard of public safety and quality of life as everyone else is.”
Congressman Ritchie Torres (middle) walks by means of the Hub, as he seems to be to deal with the group’s issues about drug markets and public security.Courtesy of U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres workplace
He was joined by Pedro Suarez, govt director of the Third Avenue BID, and Javier Medina, govt director of the Southern Boulevard BID. Medina beforehand served because the director of floor operations on the Third Avenue BID.
“In the seven years that I’ve been here, the team has reversed upwards of 220 overdoses,” Medina mentioned. “Seventy-six of those I did myself.”
NYPD officers, joined by sanitation and well being division employees, visited the Hub in each October and November 2024 to deal with the disarray and supply assets to these in want, based on a New York Put up report. Regardless of dozens of arrests and referrals to homeless shelters, the open-air drug market persists to at the present time.
“What we deserve and demand is not a temporary relocation of the drug users and dealers, but a permanent removal of the open-air drug market itself,” Torres mentioned in his letter. “[It] has become a deepening rot at the commercial core of the South Bronx.”
As a part of his proposed resolution, the congressman known as for a crackdown on repeat drug sellers, whom he accused of fueling markets just like the one within the Hub. Torres additionally urged the State to amend bail and discovery legal guidelines to make sure recurring offenders stay behind bars.
He known as on the State to grant the Mayor expanded authority to position these with extreme psychological sickness and drug habit into involuntary care.
“There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing those with severe mental illness and chemical addiction to languish in the streets of New York,” Torres mentioned in his letter.
Making an attempt to drive the dedication and therapy of people with psychological sickness has been a contentious challenge in New York since 1987 when the State Supreme Courtroom dominated towards the involuntary hospitalization and therapy of a homeless girl below the Koch administration.
Adams advocated for relaxed tips to drive individuals into therapy in 2022 and lately lobbied Hochul to codify these into regulation.
“A systematic solution requires not only enforcing the law but also amending it to the extent that the law itself is failing the People of New York,” Torres mentioned within the letter.
