New York
His Job Helping Drug Users Is Illegal. He Says He Does It to Save Lives.
During his afternoons at work, Bryan Ortiz wraps tourniquets around the arms of intravenous drug users to help them find a good vein. If asked, he will even insert the needle, and pull the plunger back, before letting the user push the drug in.
Mr. Ortiz, 29, is the “responsible person in charge” — his official title — on the late shift at OnPoint NYC in East Harlem, one of only two openly operating supervised drug consumption sites in the country. He oversees the stuffing of the tips of crack pipes with copper filters, checks off paperwork that lists what illicit drug is being consumed, and cleans up used syringes while wearing a puncture proof glove.
And most days, at least once, he brings someone back from an overdose, administering oxygen or naloxone to a user who has passed out, working on them until their eyes flutter open.
Once an emergency medical technician on a city ambulance, Mr. Ortiz now works in a liminal legal space. OnPoint is officially sanctioned by the city, but threatened by federal authorities who say the services Mr. Ortiz and his colleagues provide are illegal.
OnPoint appears to run afoul of federal law — the so-called crack house statute makes it illegal to maintain a property where illicit drugs are consumed — and has also angered some of its neighbors, who fear the center has brought even more drug activity to an area where it was common long before OnPoint arrived.
“They don’t just do their drugs or get whatever they need there and then go,” said Hallia Baker, 64, a pastor who has lived on East 126th Street since 1976. “They just hang, and here they are.”
Supervised consumption centers have also drawn criticism for what opponents say is effectively enabling drug use. And yet, as more than 100,000 Americans a year continue to die in an opioid crisis that the nation has struggled to contain, some leaders have embraced a movement known as “harm reduction” to help users do drugs more safely.
Research on more than 100 safe injection sites in other countries has found that they reduce public drug use and lower mortality rates. A branch of the National Institutes of Health recently began funding a five-year study of New York City’s centers, which OnPoint’s leaders believed indicated at least tacit approval by the Biden administration.
For Mr. Ortiz, the calculus is simple: Compared to his job as an E.M.T., he feels he can save more lives here, teaching people about how to use more safely and watching over them as they get high.
“Here, I just feel like I’m helping everyone,” Mr. Ortiz said. “Some of them are in treatment, some of them have been to detox 10 times and come back. But we know that on the road to getting clean, there’s going to be falls and scrapes.”
While he tries to encourage his clients to start treatment, he also wants to help them stay alive when they stumble, he said. He and other workers at OnPoint’s two Manhattan facilities say they have intervened in more than 1,000 overdoses since opening in November 2021, with no fatalities — a record that has drawn praise from public health officials.
But it has also brought new scrutiny from federal law enforcement.
Local, state and federal officials have known about the center, which was authorized in 2021 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and it had been operating despite the illegality of the street drugs that people use there — heroin, crack, methamphetamine.
But a few weeks ago, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District issued a warning to OnPoint NYC, and the city and state policymakers who support the project, that caught them by surprise.
“Right now, without action from policymakers, supervised consumption sites in New York City are operating in violation of federal, state and local law,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney responsible for Manhattan, said in a statement to The Times on Aug. 7. “That is unacceptable. My office is prepared to exercise all options — including enforcement — if this situation does not change in short order.”
Since then, the staff members at OnPoint have been trying to make sense of Mr. Williams’s words, even as they have vowed to continue functioning. The federal prosecutor has not reached directly out to OnPoint, said Sam Rivera, the organization’s executive director. Mr. Williams declined to comment further.
Earlier this month, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams restated the city’s support for the center’s work, even after Mr. Williams’s statement. Some state lawmakers, who have been trying to pass a bill authorizing supervised consumption sites, have reached out to their federal government contacts to see if policy has changed. For now, the center is open as usual, though the mood is a bit more wary.
There are about 200 visits per day to the East Harlem supervised consumption room where Mr. Ortiz works, which is the busier of OnPoint’s two centers (the other is in Washington Heights). Hundreds of clients also come in for other reasons, such as to exchange needles, test their drugs, do laundry, get free food, massages or medical care, or just sit and watch television in a safe space.
On the blocks around OnPoint at Park Avenue and 126th Street, a concentration of drug treatment programs, drug users and drug dealers lead to use that can be remarkably out in the open.
This upsets the center’s neighbors, some of whom have lived in the area for decades.
While OnPoint didn’t bring the drug activity to the block, some insist it has made things worse. “If you don’t have the resources to make sure that people don’t spill out into community and make a nuisance of themselves, then you’re not helping,” Ms. Baker said.
The people at OnPoint say that the realistic choice is not between a drug free neighborhood and OnPoint, but between people doing their drugs outside, or inside, where someone is on hand to help if they overdose.
“We’re going to do it; we’re going to do it somewhere,” said Ann, 39, who attends support groups at the center and takes showers there. She asked not to use her last name because of family concerns. “So would you rather it be here or somewhere else?”
This is how Mr. Ortiz sees his job. He does it, he said, because he still remembers a day during EMT training when his ambulance got a call about an overdose in Central Park. An exact location wasn’t provided, making the response difficult, and when the ambulance arrived at the park, none of the workers got out to begin the search. That upset him.
Last Wednesday, Mr. Ortiz helped Marc, 65, a former carpenter, inject fentanyl in a vein in his hand. Marc is on suboxone, a drug that helps reduce opioid cravings, but he said it was not enough.
Baeya Harris, 36, was also in the consumption room, rolling joints in one of eight mirrored booths. She had just come from the women’s support group upstairs, and said she wanted to be able to smoke without being bothered on the street. She was also coloring a design that a staff member had given her as a way to stay calm.
Mr. Ortiz, born and raised in the Bronx, oversaw the action. He had become an E.M.T., he said, after witnessing a family member overdose when he was a teenager. Only the emergency responders knew what to do to save his relative, and he wished the person helping could have been him.
In his new job, he keeps in his mind that he’s not that different from the people whom he assists. One injury that leads to an addiction, a set of different choices, and he could be in their shoes.
He uses that sense of connection, he said, to bond with clients. Sometimes, he finds out they went to the same high school or are from the same neighborhood. He tries to teach them how to avoid infections and wounds and overdoses, even when OnPoint is closed.
“Even if you’re mean to me, I’m going to be the nicest, sweetest guy, and we’re going to build a relationship whether you like it or not,” he said. “And it always happens. It always works.”
He cleaned the mirrored booths, and kept the supply bins of free syringes, crack pipettes and alcohol swabs organized. Each pipe or needle someone uses and discards here, he reasons, is one less on the street.
In the last few weeks, Bethenny Frankel has been talking a lot about Dior bags on TikTok. The subject itself isn’t unusual: As a reality TV star and entrepreneur, she frequently posts about fashion topics to her 2.4 million followers, including in a feature Ms. Frankel calls “Handbag University,” where she offers reviews and tutorials.
But the tone of Ms. Frankel’s posts about Dior is strikingly different than a typical conversation about luxury goods. Less Vogue and more Jason Bourne.
In a post on Monday, Ms. Frankel suggested there was a cover-up at play.
“I’ve received several Dior bag videos and messages about sightings which are obviously not being reported in the mainstream media,” she said.
The day before, Ms. Frankel said she had been talking to an unnamed source about the Dior bag situation, and that this person — the father of someone Ms. Frankel knows — had passed along top-secret intelligence.
“If our government tries to tell us that they’re from China, that these bags are from China, that we have an issue,” Ms. Frankel said, cryptically, repeating what she said her source had told her, “that would be very alarming.”
Confusion would be understandable to someone coming across just one of the videos, but watch enough of them and you will realize “Dior bags” aren’t always Dior bags. In this case, Ms. Frankel is using the term to refer to the drones that have been reported flying in the skies over the eastern United States and elsewhere.
Who but a fashion obsessive would use a French luxury label as a code word?
“It was in the moment — it wasn’t planned at all,” Ms. Frankel said in a phone interview. “I was just like, ‘The Dior bags are real, they’re in the closet, and management doesn’t want us to know about it.’”
Various governmental agencies have said the sightings, for the most part, are not drones, and a visual analysis by The New York Times indicated most of the sightings over New Jersey were of airplanes rather than drones.
That has not been enough to persuade Ms. Frankel.
She said she initially had only a peripheral interest in the story. Then someone she knows whose father has access to inside information of some sort — and whom she refers to only as “Waterhammer” — reached out to her with a theory explaining the drone sightings. Ms. Frankel posted about it on TikTok in the days before Christmas. But whereas her posts usually get millions of views, she said, the handful of posts in which she talked about drones “were getting 500 views.”
TikTok creators have long complained that the reach of videos has been restricted because they touched on topics the platform didn’t like — “shadow banning,” as the alleged practice has come to be known. It is hard to prove that TikTok is suppressing content, but Ms. Frankel started talking about Dior bags instead of drones in an attempt to get around algorithms and strict content moderation. Such a diversion technique is called “algospeak.”
Ms. Frankel’s fashionable way of talking in code has caught on. Indeed, the reality TV star, her followers and others who want to discuss the drone phenomenon and theorize on social media have created an alternative lexicon built around shopping terminology. “Store management,” to this group, is the U.S. government; Oscar de la Renta products are the shiny objects some have claimed to have observed in the sky; and Prada items are plasmoids, or structures made of plasma and magnetic fields.
Curiously, the largely male audience that listens to podcasters like Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL, has also adopted the term and used the hashtag #diorbags in their own videos.
“There were truckers with skull caps and guys on oil rigs talking about Dior bags,” laughed Ms. Frankel.
One group not talking about it apparently is Christian Dior SE, the French company behind the Dior brand. Its representatives did not return a request for comment.
Ms. Frankel hasn’t heard from Dior either, though she wouldn’t be surprised if that were to happen, given that the company may not want its name associated with an online community sharing wild theories about the drones.
“I can’t believe Dior corporate hasn’t called me at this point,” said Ms. Frankel. She clarified: “We’re not mad at Dior. This is just what I used.”
The conversation around “Dior bags” is happening just as another handbag discussion is dominating social media: the look-alike Birkin bag being sold at Walmart.
For anyone not in on algospeak, having a conversation about actual handbags can suddenly lead to confusion. The other day, Ms. Frankel posted about “why the Walmart Birkin is fascinating.” She was quick to clarify, “And this is legitimately about bags — it’s not code.”
The number of felony assaults and rapes in New York City rose last year even as the overall crime rate fell, Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said on Monday.
Shootings fell 7 percent last year compared with 2023, to 903, and there were 377 homicides reported in 2024, the lowest number of killings since 2020, according to police figures. The number of burglaries, robberies, car thefts and larcenies also dropped in 2024, Commissioner Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams said during a news conference.
But two crime categories — sexual assaults and felony assaults, a major crime category defined as an attack in which a dangerous weapon is used or a serious injury results — continued to buck the trend. There were 29,417 felony assaults last year, the highest number in at least 24 years and a 5 percent increase from 2023.
For the mayor, the decline in several major crime categories was an opportunity to tout his policies at a time when he is trying to persuade New Yorkers to re-elect him, even as he faces criminal prosecution and a perception that the leadership of the Police Department descended into dysfunction under his watch.
“I was clear from Day 1, not only on the campaign trail, but when I became mayor, the prerequisite to our prosperity is public safety, and I was committed to driving down crime,” Mayor Adams said. “We’re the safest big city in America. The numbers are clear.”
The department said it had received 1,748 complaints of sexual assault, nearly half of which were connected to domestic violence incidents, Commissioner Tisch said.
The number of rapes was the highest since 2020, though it was slightly lower than in 2019, when the department received 1,771 complaints of sexual assault, according to department figures. About a quarter of the rapes reported last year occurred in the Bronx.
The announcement of a drop in crime comes as headlines have been dominated by terrifying incidents, such as the killing of Debrina Kawam, a 57-year-old woman who was burned to death on the F train three days before Christmas, and the shooting of 10 people outside a club in Queens on New Year’s Day. Mr. Adams acknowledged on Monday that reporting a drop in most crime categories may not comfort many New Yorkers who are fearful of being randomly attacked on the subway or on the street.
“These high-profile random acts of violence have overshadowed our success,” he said. “We have to deal with the perception.”
Commissioner Tisch, whom Mayor Adams appointed on Nov. 20, said she had issued an order for 200 officers to patrol the city’s trains. More officers will be deployed to subway platforms in the 50 highest-crime stations in the city, she said.
“We know that 78 percent of transit crime occurs on trains and on platforms, and that is quite obviously where our officers need to be,” Commissioner Tisch said. “This is just the beginning.”
Mayor Adams said that kind of presence “will allow New Yorkers to feel the omnipresence” of the police “and feel safe.”
The number of sexual assaults was down during the first part of 2024 but began to rise later in the year. Commissioner Tisch attributed that increase in part to a rise in the number of sexual assaults connected to domestic violence incidents and a change in state law in September that expanded the definition of what constitutes rape.
Under the law, the definition was expanded from strictly vaginal penetration by a penis to include acts of oral, anal and vaginal penetration.
Felony assaults have been persistently high since 2020, however.
Commissioner Tisch pointed to recidivism, citing police figures that showed a large increase in the number of people arrested three times for the same crime.
Mayor Adams cited mental health as a factor in many of these crimes. He has directed the police and emergency medical workers to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves, even if they did not pose a danger to others.
On Monday, he broached that issue again as he pointed to recent random acts of violence committed by people who appeared to have “severe mental health issues.”
“The many cases of people being pushed on the subway tracks, of women being punched in the face,” he said, “it’s the same profile.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul has called on state legislators to pass a law that would allow hospitals to force more people into mental health treatment. Mayor Adams supports that plan, though the New York Civil Liberties Union said it “threatens New Yorkers’ rights and liberties.”
Christopher Herrmann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that while mental health is an important factor, other societal ills can drive felony assault numbers up.
“Is it housing insecurity? Are there food shortages? Is it the economy? We need to consider all of it,” he said.
Mr. Herrmann said crimes like assaults and robberies are the type “that really fuel public fear.”
“It’s just more of a reason we’ve got to get those numbers under control,” he said.
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.
Wain Chin, a New York City taxi driver, felt unlucky on Sunday morning.
From 9 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., he cruised in his yellow cab up and down the avenues between 57th Street and Houston Street in Manhattan. Only one woman could be seen raising her hand to hail a taxi — and the driver in front of Mr. Chin picked her up.
“You’ve got to hustle,” Mr. Chin said.
But he also noticed something positive: The streets seemed less crowded than usual.
“It might be less traffic,” he said, steering through Times Square with his eyebrows raised.
It was the first day of New York’s congestion pricing program, which tolls drivers entering the busiest section of Manhattan in an effort to reduce gridlock. Taxi rides are also subject to tolls, which are tacked on to passengers’ fares. For the first time, paper receipts in Mr. Chin’s cab showed a 75-cent fee marked “CRZ,” for “congestion reduction zone.”
“I have no comprehension on how it’s going to turn out,” he said.
But Mr. Chin, 57, is worried about how the new tolls might affect his profession. When traffic resurged as the coronavirus pandemic waned, cab ridership didn’t. During the 12-hour shifts he works Monday through Saturday, he previously averaged 20 to 25 fares. Now it is 15 to 20. Worse, his rides tend to be shorter — blocks, not miles, with charges of $20 instead of $40.
With an estimated 80 percent of his work in the tolling zone — below 60th Street — Mr. Chin worries that the additional fee will deter future riders, especially those going short distances.
Even marginal losses could be meaningful for Mr. Chin. A married father of three sons, he still owes about half a million dollars for the taxi medallion he inherited from his father. (He is trying to refinance.)
“We’re concerned for our survival,” said Mr. Chin, a Burmese immigrant who has driven a cab for nearly 30 years and is a member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
Any time of day, he noted, riders south of 96th Street in Manhattan start out paying $7.75 — $4.75 in fees, $3 to the taxi driver. During evening weekday rush hours, the starting price jumps to $10.25. How much more, Mr. Chin wonders, will riders take?
“We don’t know how it’s going to affect us,” he said. “We’re going to find out in a few weeks.”
He is, however, sympathetic to the needs of the city’s public transit system, which is in dire need of repairs and upgrades that will be financed with revenue from congestion pricing tolls. Cruising past the heavily guarded Trump Tower, he mused on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s promise to end congestion pricing.
“It would be great for us,” he said. “But who’s going to pay for the subway then? The federal government?”
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