NYC Mom details horrifying walk outside daughter’s Harlem school across the street from ‘safe injection’ site where druggies roam the sidewalk and needles line the ground

A mother has revealed the terrifying walk she has to make to drop her daughter off at school. She says a safe injection site has made the area more dangerous and exposed children to addicts and drug supplies.

Francesca Barreiro described walking past drug addicts passed out on the street with needles on the ground to drop off her young daughter at school in East Harlem.

She said the area used to be relatively safe, but since the OnPoint safe injection center opened in 2021, she said: “There would be people there, under the influence of drugs or trying to get drugs.

“It gives you anxiety, just like anyone going through this, and as a mother with little ones, I have to hold my children and hold them tight,” she told Fox News.

The OnPoint site is an overdose prevention center that provides drug users with a safe environment to inject themselves under medical supervision with clean needles and the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.

Francesca Barreiro pulls down the hood of her child's stroller so she doesn't see a man slumped on the sidewalk

She said her young daughter often asks why people litter

Another man collapsed on a nearby corner

The safe environment is designed to reduce the rising death toll from drug overdoses in New York City.

But Barreiro said the center is counterproductive and should never have been placed across from a school.

“We're like, 'Wait, what?' Across the street from the school? This makes no sense whatsoever. Our babies are in there,” Barreiro said.

A video of Barreiro pushing her daughter in a stroller to Graham School in Echo Park showed the extent of the problem. Drug users flow in and out of the center, some slumped on the sidewalk, others hunched over.

One man started fighting an imaginary person standing in front of him.

Barreiro said there are often more than a dozen addicts hanging around the center and she has to be on high alert. She pulls down the hood of her stroller to hide the scenes from her daughter.

She claims that because of the changes in the neighborhood, the school no longer holds classes outside on nice days or during afternoon walks.

The mother said her children have repeatedly seen used needles on the sidewalks and even witnessed people defecating or passing out while asking her “why they look like zombies?”

Barreiro said she doesn't think OnPoint is taking the right approach to helping drug addicts

She believes that the center should be located far from the schools

Barreiro said she believes the center has made the area more dangerous

“It's a horrible experience and a horrible thing to say to my child, 'They're on medication that's making their body do this,'” she said.

After parents complained to the school, a monthly meeting was organized with OnPoint to address concerns.

Since opening two years ago, 4,216 people have used their two Manhattan centers more than 106,000 times and 1,235 overdoses have been reversed, according to OnPoint.

Despite the rollback of overdoses at OnPoint's safe injection sites, New York City experienced a record 3,026 fatal overdoses in 2022, more than doubling the 2019 total, according to the health department.

Barreiro disagrees with the OnPoint methods. Her own mother was a drug addict who came clean after being presented with an ultimatum: stop using drugs or you will lose your children.

She said: “She got motivated. She cleaned herself up because she knew what was at stake.”

The center said they have reversed more than 1,200 overdoses

Barreiro said the school no longer takes students outside because it is too dangerous

About the OnPoint service, she said, “I understand, you want to help them. You want to give them clean needles and you offer them a safe haven.

“But you don't really help them, because eventually you're not there anymore and they overdose and end up dead on the street.”

Nationwide, overdose deaths increased 30 percent to 93,655 from 2019 to 2020, and continue to reach new records every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Barreiro believes OnPoint should close its safe injection sites or at least move them away from schools.

“Don't do it where there are parks,” Barreiro said. “Don't do it when there are early Head Start programs. Don't do it where these little babies see things. They shouldn't see a man on the street with a needle in his hand, half naked.'

OnPoint did not respond to this report in a timely manner.