The New York Post e-Edition

GIVING JUNKIES THE ‘HIGH’ SIGN

NYPD directive officially makes drug needles OK

By KERRY J. BYRNE and DEAN BALSAMINI Additional reporting by Jon Levine and Conor Skelding

New York City’s war on drugs is over. The junkies won.

The NYPD waved the white flag last week — upon orders from Albany — directing cops to let drug addicts shoot up on city streets, and even let them share needles.

“Effective immediately, members of the service should not take any enforcement action against any individual who possesses a hypodermic needle, even when it contains residue of a controlled substance,” said a directive to NYPD commanders issued last Friday and obtained by The Post.

Senate Bill 2523, cited in the order, decriminalizes the possession or sale of hypodermic needles and syringes, commonly used by addicts to inject drugs such as heroin.

“This law says stick a needle in your arm, pump your body with poison and lose your life,” said state Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-SI), one of the few city lawmakers who opposed the legislation. “This law says to people suffering addiction that New York has given up on you, that New York doesn’t care about you.”

The measure, effective Oct. 7, was sponsored by state Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx) and signed into law by Gov. Hochul last week in Manhattan.

“This is outrageous,” railed realestate executive Bill Abramson, who represents residential and commercial clients around the city, many of whom have complained to him about addicts whacked out in their stoops and doorways.

“Once again, quality of life in New York City continues to deteriorate because of laws that do not consider the residents and businesses of the city. We all agree that something needs to be done to help addicts. But letting them shoot up on the streets does not help anyone. This is bad for everyone.”

The NYPD directive tells cops that “it is no longer a violation of law for an individual to possess a hypodermic needle, even when it did not come from a pharmacy or a needle-exchange program.”

In other words: Junkies are free to score needles on the black market or share them with others.

The potential for needle sharing “contravenes any logical and reasonable science based upon public health standards,” Lanza said.

This bill “passed under the guise of compassion, but it’s one of the least compassionate bills I’ve seen come across the Legislature in a long time,” he added. “There is nothing compassionate about telling people to keep doing something that is going to kill them.”

Sharing needles increases the risk of communicable diseases, most notably HIV.

The city runs 14 storefront and 33 mobile needle exchanges that distributed 4.5 million syringes in 2018, the last year for which data is available, according to the Department of Health.

The new legislation comes as city streets, parks and public spaces have been overrun by junkies and as fatal overdoses have soared.

The Post in recent months has described scenes of addicts injecting or smoking drugs in broad daylight across the city, including in Washington Square Park and on the streets of Midtown.

Barbara Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance, which is battling heroin use in front of member businesses, was outraged.

“The new law is preposterous,” she said. “Mentally and emotionally ill individuals should be removed from the streets, involuntarily if necessary. They should be placed in high-quality settings, institutional settings if necessary, where they get the shelter, food and care they need.

“Having drug addicts, a frightful condition, freely injecting drugs and passing out in public is not tenable.”

Still, state lawmakers voted to let addicts freely use heroin and other injected drugs in public without threat of arrest.

“I hear the valid concerns that certain New Yorkers have regarding the increased presence of substance use on our streets and its impact on our communities,” said Rivera, the bill’s sponsor.

“That is why it is critical that we move swiftly to open overdose-prevention centers, a proven tool in preventing overdose deaths, stopping the spread of disease, providing a safe nonpublic space for those using drugs and a pathway to recovery.” The decriminalization of harddrug paraphernalia represents a pivot to the left by Hochul, a Democrat from a traditionally Republican upstate district, said state Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar.

“This is not even a standard Democratic view. This is a progressive Democratic view, and that’s what she’s signing on to here,” he said. “It all seems to be very oriented toward keeping the socialist progressive movement happy.”

He speculated Hochul was protecting herself against likely primary challenges from state Attorney General Letitia James and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, both city-based progressives.

Before the new law, a cop might have arrested an addict for shooting up in public, with only the residue of the drug left in the syringe. But under the new law, that residue

This law says to people suffering addiction that New York has given up on you, that New York doesn’t care about you. State Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-SI)

is no longer a cause for arrest.

Possessing hypodermic needles was an arrestable, but nonbailable offense under the state’s latest bailreform laws. Junkies arrested for shooting up or selling small amounts of heroin were typically back out on the street the same day.

The bail-reform laws — along with the threat of injury or infection from needles and the repeal of qualified immunity that shielded officers from lawsuits — have motivated cops to look the other way when faced with open drug use.

The new law, and the NYPD directive to officers, codifies this informal hands-off policy.

The results will be bad for all New Yorkers, including the addicts, predicted Joseph Giacalone, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“Six months from now, New York politicians will be scratching their heads wondering why syringes are everywhere, drug use is up, overdoses are up, and why open-air drug markets are flourishing,” he said.

“It makes you shake your head.”

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2021-10-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://nypost.pressreader.com/article/283467849464313

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