Hell’s Kitchen Residents Voice Concerns over Open Drug Use

Hell’s Kitchen residents voiced concerns over street drug use at a meeting of Midtown North’s police precinct community council last week. The residents claimed that they have seen a significant uptick in the use of injection-based drugs on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen since the pandemic.

Mayor Eric Adams has made himself known for being tough on drugs. The web site Gothamist reported that Adams said he has seen an 84 percent increase in drug arrests since he took office. The recent article said, “New Yorkers have made over 34,000 complaints to 911 and 311 about drug activity this year.”

Susan Ameel, a resident of Hell’s Kitchen, was one of those New Yorkers making complaints. “We’re watching people kill themselves on a daily basis,” said Ameel during the community council meeting. She said she called 911 three times on Sept. 19 due to open drug use in front of 442 West 45th. Her office space overlooks the front stoop of the building, and she said she watches drug-users come and go from the building all day long.

Local resident David Stuart made a similar complaint about 353 West 45th, a building also on his block. “People from a bunch of different neighborhoods are coming here to sell stolen goods,trade them for drugs, and even to use prostitution for drugs,” Stuart said during the meeting. The building that Stuart reported has seen 35 complaints and 39 violations in the last 2 years, according to New York City’s Housing Preservation and Development database. Many residents said they have seen increased numbers of needles and syringes being discarded on the streets; they even said they have seen drug users “shoot up and then pass out,” according to a resident of Hell’s Kitchen for over 26 years, Sheila Weiss. Many long-time residents of Hell’s Kitchen say that the neighborhood is evolving back into its state from the 1980s.

“Many of us have been here for a long time, and we can’t believe that it’s slipping back into the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Richard Marans, a partner at the law firm Marans,Weisz & Newman.

A recent city report said Sanitation Department collected over 90,000 needles from public spaces in the past fiscal, which was a 30 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. The 90,861 needles collected in the latest 12 month period was nearly the triple the 32,520 collected in the 2021 fiscal year only two years ago.

Residents clearly had quite a lot to say—with no one to listen. Police were busy protecting the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Many residents took this as a sign of the larger problem at stake: they said that police are largely understaffed and underpaid. The Midtown North police precinct did not respond to requests for comment. Eric Strazza, Community Engagement Coordinator from the DA’s Community Partnership Unit, acknowledged during the meeting that the DA’s office has “heard quite a lot” about street drug use in 2023. Strazza announced a new program through the Bridge, which is “a peer-founded housing and behavioral health services provider.” The program names Hell’s Kitchen as one of its main areas of focus. The program announcement described its objectives: “Neighborhood Navigators from The Bridge will build trusting relationships with individuals who may have a mental illness or substance use disorder that are living or spending significant time on the street in Manhattan priority areas determined by community feedback.”

“A lot of the work that the DA does has to do with once people enter the criminal justice system. We are hoping that we can work with them before they get there,” said Strazza during the meeting. So: why are residents claiming they’re seeing more drug-users out on the streets?

Dr. Adam Bisaga, a Research Scientist at Columbia University specializing in addiction science, said that injection-based drugs have actually gone down substantially in the last 10 to 15 years— particularly since widespread heroin-usage in the ‘70s and ‘80s. But that trend may be changing in recent years. According to provisional data done by the New York Department of Health in early 2023, there were 2,668 drug overdoses In 2021, compared to 2,103 in 2020. State-level data saw a similar increase in 2023, which many officials say is linked to the rise of the use of drugs like fentanyl.

Current state policy disallows the NYPD from making arrests on the basis of needle or syringepossession. Some residents took issue with this policy, imploring the DA’s office and police to domore. (Police can, however, arrest someone who possesses a controlled substance).As Sheila Weiss said, “You could go sit in front of the police station and shoot up right now, andthey wouldn’t do anything.”