Harlem residents demand cleanup of drug refuse in Central Park's North Woods

The North Woods, 40 acres of dense woods containing waterfalls, boulders to climb and shade on a hot summer day, are Central Park’s largest forest. But local residents say rampant drug use over the last year has made the woods too dangerous.

Last week, the narrow winding paths were covered with discarded clothes, plastic shopping bags filled with human feces, uncapped syringes and an extraordinary amount of brightly colored drug vials and fentanyl capsules commonly known as trash cans. Tents and tarps were pitched throughout the woods, and people injected themselves with needles as nearby parkgoers walked their dogs or pushed babies in strollers.

Patrick Buckley, who has a 3-year-old son, took it upon himself to start collecting the drug litter after his son’s friend picked up an orange syringe cap.

“He was just excited about the bright colors,” Buckley said. “We got to do something about this, because I know he's not the only curious toddler out there in New York City walking around wondering what these cool neon-colored things are.”

In just an hour of collecting drug litter with a trash picker, Buckley filled about a quarter of a 3-gallon bucket with caps, syringes and other drug refuse. Xavier Santiago, the chair of Community Board 11, which covers East Harlem and Randall's Island, said drug use is the top complaint his office has received over the last year.

“We're not dealing with holistic care and getting people into recovery,” said Santiago, who carries the overdose antidote Narcan. “The sooner we do so, the sooner we'll have a return to safer streets, to be able to walk in our parks without seeing the needle refuse, which is a danger to the community [and] the kids who want to play there should be able to play there.”

Gothamist spoke to a dozen Harlem residents who said they’ve sent numerous emails to local politicians, City Hall, 311, the parks department and Central Park Conservancy to demand a cleanup of the area and a plan to help those using drugs in the woods. But they said their complaints have not yielded noticeable change on the ground so far.

“The North Woods is gorgeous, it’s my favorite part of the park," said Jenny Scobel, who lives in East Harlem. "But I stay away from the North Woods because of the drug use."

"I can’t take it anymore," she added. "I see people every day with needles in their neck and people selling drugs openly on street corners.”

Santiago said complaints about drug use in Harlem and East Harlem surged in 2015, when synthetic marijuana, also known as K2, became popular. He said the situation worsened during the pandemic's onset in 2020. A safe injection site that serves people who use drugs opened in East Harlem at the end of 2021.

Ricky Bluthenthal, a University of Southern California professor who has studied drug addiction in the United States for more than 30 years, said East Harlem has the most opioid treatment clinics of any New York City neighborhood.

More than 70% of the visitors to the treatment clinics live outside of Harlem, according to Santiago. Bluthenthal said that opening clinics closer to their homes would both help people who are addicted to drugs and reduce the drug use and litter in the neighborhood.

He cautioned that it was a mistake to assume that the people seeking help at methadone clinics or safe injection sites were also shooting up in Central Park.

“Where people end up using drugs, it's shaped by prohibition and it's shaped by poverty,” said Bluthenthal. “Overdose prevention sites or drug consumption sites are giving people the resources they need to be safer and to keep the community safer. So if you had more of them, you would have less of this [drug] litter.”

But Harlem residents said the litter from drug use has gotten so bad that they don’t feel safe bringing their children to Central Park.

“Living where we live, our 15-year-old daughter is conditioned not to go anywhere by herself — even around the corner, the park or playgrounds,” said Matt Lamb, who has lived in Harlem for 17 years. “You don't want to hold your breath every time your kid leaves home.”

A Central Park Conservancy spokesperson said staff are trained to collect drug refuse as part of their regular cleanup duties. Best practices for collecting discarded drugs and paraphernalia typically involve using puncture-resistant gloves, a trash picker or pliers and a sharps disposal container. The conservancy tracks the amount of the needles it collects but declined to share data.

Days after Gothamist contacted the parks department and Central Park Conservancy, Buckley reported that much of the drug litter had been picked up. But he added that plenty of vials and caps were still being left on the ground.

The city's health department noted that there are programs for cleaning up drug litter in Upper Manhattan and that those programs collected more than 173,500 syringes last year.

"The city takes syringe litter and community livability very seriously,” wrote Rachel Vick, press officer for the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “The health department meets regularly with the parks department, other city agencies and numerous community-based organizations to be as responsive to community syringe litter needs as possible and uses information from the public to help inform our efforts.”

Vick did not respond to follow-up inquiries about whether the programs included cleanup efforts inside Central Park.

“Our families shouldn't need to shield their kids from people injecting themselves as they walk their dogs in the park," said Manhattan Councilmember Shaun Abreu. "We have to do better. We need interagency cooperation — not just the NYPD, but the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the parks department and other agencies that protect our well-being.”

In 2021, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law decriminalizing the sale and possession of needles. Santiago from Community Board 11 emphasized that most locals were not demanding an NYPD crackdown on drug users.

“We need programs for our people who don't have those financial resources,” he said. “These are human beings that we want to help as well and get them back to functioning in society and being contributing members.”