Police arrested City Councilman Stephen Levin and a dozen other protesters Wednesday after they blocked traffic outside City Hall, calling for Mayor Bill de Blasio to release a study on safe drug sites, which they say could reduce overdoses.
The rally on Broadway, which was organized by the activist group VOCAL-NY, focused on a feasibility study commissioned by the City Council two years ago on opening Safer Consumption Spaces, or SCS, in the city. These facilities would allow drug users to shoot up under the supervision of trained staff.
The mayor’s office had said it would release the study in April, but nothing came. Levin said the delay creates a greater health problem as every seven hours a New Yorker dies from a drug overdose.
“We have a tool that is proven to increase access to treatment and reduce fatal overdoses. We can take action today,” he said in a statement.
Levin was released later Wednesday afternoon, according to his office.
A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said the report would be released soon, and did not give further details. On Friday, de Blasio said on his weekly radio appearance on WNYC that the report was “literally days away,” and would be combined with “our view, the mayor’s office view, on how to respond to that report.”
De Blasio has expressed reservation about SCS use in the past, calling the program “complex.”
“We’re going to come out with a vision of how to handle this very complex matter,” he said Friday. “However we handle this, it is a very complex matter legally and in terms of law enforcement.”
Both the NYPD and the city’s Department of Health have discussed establishing SCS facilities, but haven’t put forth any formal proposals.
The City Council allocated $100,000 to fund the report in 2016.
With Matthew Chayes
