A group of men were pictured taking drugs out in the open near New York City‘s La Marqueta marketplace, in East Harlem, as vagrancy and crime continues to run rampant in the Big Apple.
Photos and video of the men lying on Park Avenue between 115th E Street and 116 E Street outside the small but popular marketplace show them casually using needles to inject drugs into their arms and over the weekend.
The men sit underneath the railway surrounded by bags of their belongings and an overturned Citi bike, and photos of the block the following day show even more men shooting up drugs at the site.
Although the area is primarily a shopping district, many families pass by the marketplace as it borders the Cooke School Institute, which teaches special education students from ages 5 to 21, as well as the P.S. 57 and and P.S. 155 Elementary Schools.
The marketplace is also nearby the New York City Housing Authority’s East Harlem office and the East Harlem Neighborhood Health Action Center.
The scene comes despite NYC Mayor Eric Adam’s vow to crackdown on homelessness and crime in the city, which is up nearly 40 percent from last year.
Two men were pictured on May 28 taking drugs out in the open in East Harlem’s La Marqueta marketplace
One of the men removed his shoe so he could inject his foot in order to get high at the small but popular marketplace
The following day, seven other men were pictured at the same spot taking drugs together
The men, sitting down with bags of filled with their belongings, injected the drugs in their arms
It comes as vagrancy and crime runs rampant in the Big Apple despite Mayor Eric Adams vow to crackdown on both
New Yorkers have been growing weary over the latest spike in violence and crimes on the city streets and subways.
While murders and shootings are down 10 and roughly five percent respectively from 2021, overall crime in the Big Apple is up 39.24 percent so far in 2022.
That includes a 19 percent rise in felony assaults, a nearly 15 percent increase in rapes and a 40 percent jump in robberies.
Vagrancy has also been on the rise in the city, with Adams ordering wave after wave of officers to take down homeless encampments throughout the city since March.
City officials said police have taken down more than 300 camps throughout the five boroughs, but the homeless continue to rebuild their encampments, claiming that the city’s homeless shelters are ‘dangerous’ and not an adequate solution to its vagrancy problem.
A tense face-off occurred earlier in May when seven NYPD vehicles arrived in Broadway to remove a single tent belonging to a homeless couple named James and Nico.
The group of seven men were pictured prepping their needles on May 29 as they got high out in the open
One of them injected the drugs directly into his foot underneath the railway
New York Police have been cracking down on homeless encampments since late March. A homeless person gathers his belongings as DSNY workers supervised by NYPD and homeless outreach officials deconstruct a homeless encampment on Broadway, Manhattan, on May 11
The NYPD brought seven vehicles to line a block to get rid of just one homeless tent from the sidewalk in the East Village
Homeless couple James and Nico (left) speak with an advocate for the homeless (right) as police remove their tent
Adams also launched his subway safety initiative in April, sending about 1,000 officers into the city’s busy transit system to weed out crime and vagrancy, yet both continue to persist to the point where some New Yorkers are even taking justice into their own hands.
Last Friday, a group of men were filmed restraining and beating up another man suspected of trying to sexually assault a girl at the Fulton Subway stop in Manhattan.
The clip, shared online over the weekend, shows one man restraining the suspect, while two others take turns to rain blows down on him.
It has been presented as a racist attack by some advocacy groups online given the suspect was an Asian man, but others have claimed the punching was an act of vigilante ‘justice.’
They say the victim had tried to molest a girl on train shortly before the beating began, according to the New York Post.
One of the men could be heard saying: ‘You touching girls, you touching girls — little sisters and all that, moms and everything. You filthy, son.’
Another was heard to remark that he had a daughter, and that he’d pay his own bail if he was arrested. It remains unclear if any of the allegations made against the victim of the beating are true.
The video, which was filmed at Fulton Street station, shows one man restraining the Asian man next to a metal pillar whilst another two take it in turns to punch him in the head
A second man punches him at least six times in the head – all whilst the Asian man is restrained – before the group of men cheer the beating
