Blazzy's Smack and Crack Houses

 

NY Post

Smoking crack cocaine is officially sanctioned at the “safe injection sites” Mayor Bill de Blasio brought to Manhattan this week in a move that’s infuriated the centers’ neighbors — and has at least one business owner packing his bags.

“People are allowed to bring the substance that they prefer to use here and they are permitted to consume the substance in the manner of their choice,” East Harlem site director Kailin See confirmed.

“We are there to make sure that no medical emergency occurs and to connect them into care if they need that,” she said, adding that many of her clients use drugs laced with fentanyl including heroin, cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, amphetamine and K2.

The nonprofit is one of two in Upper Manhattan that became the country’s first legal shooting galleries when they opened Tuesday.

And they have had an immediate effect — but maybe not the one de Blasio, who has just four weeks left in office, was hoping for as business owners still left standing try and dig out from the pandemic.

One merchant near the second center, in Washington Heights, said the junkie haven is forcing him to move his retail shop out of the neighborhood.

“Now they’re going to promote the drugs and people don’t have to worry if they get sick or they’re going to die because they’re gonna have medical people that are gonna take care of them so that they don’t overdose and die so that they can do their drugs again tomorrow?” the shop owner said.

de Blasio needle exchange and sanitation program in the South Bronx is an abysmal failure

PIX News

  If we’ve learned nothing else about the heroin epidemic in the South Bronx, it’s that there’s a seemingly endless supply of the opiate on the street, especially near the bustling intersection known officially as “The Hub” and unofficially as “The Hub of Heroin”.

That means plenty of temptation for recovering addicts like 53-year-old Enrique Santiago.

"They throw the needles on the floor and stuff like that," said Santiago. Santiago's spent the better part of the last two decades trying to stay clean. "I've been on methadone for a year."

He takes the synthetic drug once a day, six days a week to help ward off cravings for the real thing. And he admits that seventh day without any help  is hard.

It was just last month PIX11’s reporting forced the de Blasio Administration to address residents’ concerns over hundreds of dirty needles found in city garbage cans, and on the street, tossed by the heroin addicts who are getting their fix in broad daylight.

"They be in the buildings, sleeping, urinating, feces and also, they just have so many needles. It's everywhere," said Bronx building porter Michael Dawson.

But in the wake of our reports, residents like building porter Michael Dawson and former heroin addict Vincent Almojera both question whether one of the city’s solutions — needle exchange programs — have only made the addiction crisis worse.

Vincent believes a neighborhood already playing host to a number of methadone clinics could use a few more without the bad rap that comes with visiting them.

"The methadone clinic is not the problem, the methadone clinic is one of the solutions," said Almojera. "The problem is handing out free needles, handing out free needles and the stigma that comes with treatment. People look down on you when you go into treatment and that's the problem."

de Blasio's and Banks' DHS covers up the severity of violence and drug dealing in city shelters

NY Post


City officials covered up nearly 120 “serious incidents” at homeless shelters by downgrading their severity so they wouldn’t have to be disclosed to state regulators, according to the city Department of Investigation.

The DOI conducted a yearlong probe into allegations that the Department of Homeless Services wasn’t “adequately” reporting arrests and other problems to the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which is responsible for ensuring that shelters are safe.

The investigation revealed that DHS created its own “priority codes” that minimized “life-threatening injuries,” mental-health emergencies and some arrests of residents, visitors or staffers, according to an April 8 DOI memo obtained by The Post.

There were “approximately 117 internal reports” from January through June 2017 that contained information that should have been reported, the memo said.
City Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), who tipped off DOI to the situation, told The Post, 

“There’s only one word for the conduct of DHS: inexcusable.”

“DHS adopted a dubious definition of serious incidents that it knew would lead to the under-reporting of incidents consisting of serious injuries, mental health emergencies, arrests and situations affecting the safety of its own residents and staff,” Torres said.

NY Post 

 Security at the city’s homeless shelters is so shoddy that one Harlem facility had its own in-house heroin dealer, according to records and fed-up workers.

Parkview Inn resident Alice Cuesta, 52, was finally busted last month with 60 glassines of heroin after clumsily dropping them right in front of an NYPD sergeant inside the elevator at the West 110th Street shelter, prosecutors said court papers.

Before her fateful fumble, Cuesta had held free rein at the shelter “for a long time,” law-enforcement and DHS sources told The Post — adding that the situation is similar at shelters across the city.

Security gaps, as well as overworked DHS officers who simply don’t have the time, training or help to conduct thorough investigations, have left some residents wondering if they wouldn’t be better off taking their chances on the street.

Supervised shoot-up program being studied

From the Daily News:

The city will study whether to set up sites for drug addicts to shoot up safely with $100,000 approved by the City Council Wednesday.

The controversial program known as supervised injection facilities gives addicts a place to use drugs under medical supervision to avoid overdoses or spreading HIV and other diseases.

The study, which will be done by the Health Department, “will assess the feasibility and impact of NYC having a program that provides a safe, clean haven to high-risk, vulnerable New Yorkers and will help prevent drug overdoses and disease transmissions,” said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

The money comes from $5.6 million approved to fight AIDS in the current city budget.

I can't wait for the siting hearings for this bright idea!

Queens cops save 2 people that OD'ed on heroin

From PIX11:

NYPD officers were able to save two people who overdosed on heroin in separate incidents in Queens.

Officers Brett Devine and Lieutenant David Goldstein reported to a second-floor St. Albans apartment on Dunkirk Street just before 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.

While there, they found a 51-year-old man lying on his back in bed, losing consciousness and barely breathing. A female friend of the man said he had just snorted heroin and quickly became unresponsive.

Officer Devine immediately recognized the overdose symptoms including pin-point pupils unaffected by light and blue lips and fingertips.

The officers immediately administered a single lifesaving dose of naloxone nasal spray. Moments later, the man regained consciousness and his breathing was nearly at full-strength. He spoke coherently and opted to walk down the stairs where he was able to step into an ambulance.

The man was transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in stable condition.

Hours later, Officers Kevin Mooney and Matilde Leonardi reported to a building on 71st Avenue in Pomonok, where a woman told cops her 18-year-old daughter fell unconscious after taking heroin.

The teen was completely unresponsive, not breathing, turning blue and had no pulse. The officers quickly administered the naloxone spray and minutes later, she regained consciousness and stong breathing.

She was able to walk to a waiting ambulance from her second-floor apartment. She was transported to Queens Hospital Center in stable condition.

Havoc wrought by illegal alien

From the NY Post:

A heartless Scrooge wants to give his ex-wife a lump of coal for Christmas — by booting her and their kids from a rent-stabilized Brooklyn apartment.

Convicted drug dealer Ahmed Elgheur is currently locked up and facing deportation for immigration fraud.

But before he gets tossed back to Morocco, he is trying to get ex-wife Bajia Elmourabit evicted from her $1,140-a-month, three-bedroom home so his young girlfriend can move in.

Elgheur, 47, used an alias to sign the lease on the Ocean Parkway pad almost 20 years ago.

He and Elmourabit had two children — a son, now 19, and a daughter, 17 — before he abandoned the family after being busted for selling heroin and jumping bail.

Elgheur eventually surrendered and served more than six years in prison for two federal drug raps.

Meanwhile, Elmourabit, 47, raised the kids on her own and made a living running a since-closed Moroccan restaurant on Prospect Park West.

She renewed the lease every two years, signing her own name at the bottom, and paying the rent on her own for 17 years without any child support.

But her ex-husband’s alias — “Gerome Mancini” — stayed at the top of the rental agreement.

Elmourabit’s housing nightmare began last year, when she got an eviction notice from “Mancini.”

Selling the heroin Americans won't sell

From the NY Post:

Federal drug agents raided a heroin distribution den -- in a ground floor studio apartment in Richmond Hill, Queens -- and seized a stash worth $20 million, authorities said today.

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Organized Crime Drug enforcement Strike Force had been watching the 122nd Street apartment for weeks.

On Tuesday night they saw a person wearing latex drugs, like those used by heroin mill workers, at the site.

After midnight Jose Santiago Diaz, 44, left the apartment, with keys to it, and had a smell on heroin on him when agents questioned him, authorities said.

Diaz, of The Bronx, was identified as an illegal alien who was previously deported to the Dominican Republic. He was charged with criminal drug possession and other charges.

Squatters make life hell in Ridgewood

From the Forum:

René Zupancic lives in fear of her neighbors.

“They throw everything out on the roof or out those windows. They throw used sanitary napkins along the road over here. They scream; they yell. They beat a dog up really really bad one time. They’re heroin users,” she said. “It’s terrible.”

On Cypress Avenue in Ridgewood, Zupancic and her brother live next door to an abandoned three-story building that a group of eight to 12 young squatters have claimed as their own.

For more than a year, she’s been forced to tolerate illegal neighbors who fight, drink, smell, shoot up and generally terrorize the neighborhood, she said.

Recently it’s gotten worse, she said, with the squatters getting more violent and rowdy, doing things like throwing a car mirror into oncoming traffic or abusing animals.

In desperation, Zupancic is reaching out to the local community board and anyone else who will listen.

“These people are roamers, and it’s bad enough that they’re squatting there,” said Gary Giordano, Community Board 5’s district manager. “It’s getting pretty crazy.”

Giordano said PSCH has abandoned the building and is in the process of getting it demolished but is held up in housing court.

Woodhaven heroin peddlers busted

From the Queens Gazette:

Twenty suspected members of a Woodhaven-based heroin ring were indicted in Brooklyn Federal Court on March 13, wrapping up a nine-month probe by the NYPD, Nassau County Police, Suffolk County Police, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

The law enforcement agencies joined forces after police from Queens to Nassau County noticed an increase in heroin use on Long Island, the spokesperson said.

The probe, dubbed Operation County Connection, uncovered a network operated by a group known as the Perez Organization, based in Woodhaven, said U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, spokesperson for the Eastern District.

Law enforcement agents that busted the ring seized heroin with a street value of more than $30,000, along with thousands of dollars in cash, an FBI spokesperson said.