New York City residents slam 'safe injection sites' after drug users trash neighborhood
New York City residents are speaking out after users at a taxpayer-funded "safe injection site" operated by OnPoint have left their neighborhood rife with social dysfunction – including public intercourse and defecation.
Users at OnPoint’s East Harlem headquarters have been engaging in lewd antisocial behavior that has left local residents furious, the New York Post reported. One disgusted resident told the outlet he witnessed public sex in broad daylight.
"The guy was just doing his thing, just looking around, wasn’t afraid of anything. I couldn’t believe it. I just could not believe it, the guy finished, and he just starts zipping his pants and walking away. And the woman was still bent over wondering what was going on. And then after he got maybe three yards away, she said ‘Hey, hey! That’s it?’ and he said, ‘Come on!’ and then she pulled up her pants and ran behind him," the resident said.
WATCH: DC HOMELESS WEIGH IN ON TRUMP CLEANING UP CITY STREETS
The East Harlem site, which opened in 2021, provides addicts with clean drug paraphernalia such as needles and pipes, which they can use to imbibe their drug of choice within the confines of the site's walls.
Proponents of this so-called "harm reduction" strategy for drug use claim that it saves chronic users from overdoses by providing them a safe setting to use, while critics say the sites enable addicts instead of treating their underlying problems, and merely delay the inevitable.
OnPoint boasts that it has prevented 1,800 overdoses since its centers in East Harlem and Washington Heights opened, and the centers’ budget has ballooned to $17.4 million a year. According to city officials, nearly 6,000 addicts used illegal drugs at the centers 38,000 times in the last year alone.
The sites exist in a legal gray area, where they’re permitted by city rules but illegal under state and federal law. The Trump administration is investigating the sites and is planning to take civil or criminal action, according to the New York Post.
"They have sex in our yards, they defecate behind our cars. It’s a mess," local resident Shkigale Baker, 69, said.
NEW YORK CITY OPENS FIRST GOVERNMENT-FUNDED TRANSGENDER HOMELESS SHELTER IN THE NATION
One resident, Barker, claimed he was treated to his own "porno show" in June when a woman engaged in carnal affairs right in front of her home.
"There was a woman here, she laid her blanket out. I was sitting here thinking ‘What is she doing?’ Then she took off her pants, a guy came, and I’m sitting here thinking ‘What? I’m getting my own porno show – are you kidding me?'"
"They just don’t care, it’s just been awful," her sister and housemate, Hallia Baker, said.
OnPoint NYC did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.