It’s the Great Black Tar Way.
A cluster of junkies has turned Broadway into a shooting gallery, injecting drugs unhampered in broad daylight and then shuffling around in a zonked-out stupor, seemingly oblivious to the Midtown bustle around them, The Post has learned.
If that wasn’t enough, the addicts are peppering the area with used syringes, turning individual planters on 40th Street and Broadway into mini needle parks.
“They’ve taken over the tables, blatantly using needles and shooting up heroin all day long,” said a local worker who asked that he only be identified as James. “There’s no police action, there’s no reach-out. There’s nobody preventing this, and you know we’ve had multiple calls to 311 but nobody really responds. It’s becoming a real problem.”
He called his own 311 calls “futile exercises.”
The Post spotted several of the spent needles dumped at the scene — and even caught one of the vagrants shooting up out in the open on Tuesday afternoon, with no one stepping in or saying a word.
Another photo from a local showed four people slumped over at one of the tables at the busy intersection earlier in the day, with drug paraphernalia clearly visible between them.
“In the morning, they start early in the morning,” said construction worker Edgar Rivera, who’s been working at a nearby site in recent weeks. “It’s almost always the same people you see around. It’s always the same ones all the time. They are, like, here every day.”
“We see them sleeping on the floor,” Rivera said. “Sometimes the ambulances come around here to help them out. It’s always the same guys.”
An employee for a private sanitation company who gave the name Jeff said he’s worked in the area for about six years and the situation has gotten worse.
“Disappointing the way they discard all the syringes. It’s not the safest,” he said. “In the last year, it’s gotten really bad. I’ve been seeing more syringes, discarded syringes, ever since they started coming in.”
In a statement late Tuesday, a City Hall spokesperson called the situation “entirely unacceptable.”
“We will do everything we can to connect these people with drug treatment and help so they can get their lives back on track,” the statement said.
Police said they have only received one drug complaint in the area over the past month, and the suspects were gone by the time cops arrived.
