SH**HOLE NEWS: NYC Shop Owners Claim Junkies Shoplifting, Selling Goods for Drugs: ‘It’s like a parade’; Mamdani Ally Donovan Richards Breaks with Mayor to Call for Tearing Down Homeless Encampments in Bitter NYC Cold

NYC shop owners claim junkies shoplifting, selling goods for drugs: ‘It’s like a parade’:

Lower East Side residents aren’t the only ones ticked off at the influx of junkies and vagrants at a popular local park — neighborhood storeowners say the bums are robbing them blind.

The gripes come after The Post reported recently that hordes of addicts who were booted from Washington Square Park have found a new home at Sara D. Roosevelt Park, smack in the middle of a neighborhood teaming with young families — and hardworking merchants.

“Sometimes it’s like a parade,” a business owner said. “They come in, grab what they want, and go to the park to sell it. They come in almost every day.

“The park — it’s full, full, full” of vagrants, he said. “You can’t even walk in there after six o’clock.”

Neighborhood merchants said they feel helpless as they watch the addicts peddle their swiped merchandise for drugs — adding the outrageous scenes cost them both money and customers.

“Sometimes I see needles in front of my store,” a local bakery shop owner said. “It’s hurting my business. [But] you can’t touch them. We can’t hurt anybody. We get in trouble for that.”

The situation has drawn the ire of local community leaders, who maintain that City Hall has turned its back on the neighborhood — even as the new surge of junkies has overtaken the park.

“Once again, city agencies show they only move fast for wealthy neighborhoods while pushing their problems on poorer ones like Chinatown,” Democratic District Leader Jacky Wong said last week. --->READ MORE HERE

Mamdani ally Donovan Richards breaks with mayor to call for tearing down homeless encampments in bitter NYC cold:

Even a top city ally of lefty Mayor Zohran Mamdani has joined the massive chorus demanding Hizzoner tear down local vagrant shanties to move the homeless to safety and prevent them from freezing to death.

“Being homeless shouldn’t be a death sentence,” said Democratic Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who readily endorsed Mamdani in last year’s election, to The Post on Sunday.

“You can’t let the people stay out there. These are people in crisis,” Richards said.

As The Post reported exclusively last week, Mamdani’s administration ordered city cops and sanitation workers to stop tearing down homeless encampments — just weeks before now 14 people have been found dead outdoors during the recent Arctic deep freeze.

At least eight of those found dead outdoors died from hypothermia, or from freezing to death.

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, a Republican, joined Donovan in calling for Mamdani to reverse course.

“We said before that people will die. Now it looks like the policy is leading to more deaths,” Fossella told The Post.

He said the encampments are dangerous even during warmer weather because they are riddled with criminality and rampant drug use. --->READ MORE HERE

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