Discarded syringes litter the bottom on the Hub, highlighting the continued 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 business 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 Avenue and East one hundred and fiftieth Avenue.
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 stated within the letter.
The borough faces the very best price 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 neighborhood 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 stated through 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 the Hub, as he appears to be like to handle the neighborhood’s considerations about drug markets and public security.Courtesy of U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres workplace
He was joined by Pedro Suarez, government director of the Third Avenue BID, and Javier Medina, government 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 stated. “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 handle the disarray and supply assets to these in want, based on a New York Publish report. Regardless of dozens of arrests and referrals to homeless shelters, the open-air drug market persists to this present day.
“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 stated in his letter. “[It] has become a deepening rot at the commercial core of the South Bronx.”
As a part of his proposed answer, the congressman referred to 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 ordinary offenders stay behind bars.
He referred to as on the State to grant the Mayor expanded authority to position these with extreme psychological sickness and drug dependancy 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 stated in his letter.
Trying to drive the dedication and remedy of people with psychological sickness has been a contentious situation in New York since 1987 when the State Supreme Court docket dominated in opposition to the involuntary hospitalization and remedy of a homeless lady below the Koch administration.
Adams advocated for relaxed tips to drive individuals into remedy in 2022 and not too long ago 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 stated within the letter.
