Griffin Kelly, Matthew Sedacca, and Melissa Klein report for the New York Post about a disturbing development in the Big Apple.
New York City school kids are losing their minds over the zonked-out drug addicts and raving vagrants they encounter every day – and are flocking to therapists to find ways to cope with the stress, The Post has learned.
In neighborhoods such as Hell’s Kitchen “a lot” of kids are now in therapy, according to mom Katie Hamill, 43, whose 7-year-old daughter is being treated for anxiety.
“My daughter has seen everything from fornication, masturbation, defecation, urination, you name it, she has seen it. … consistently and constantly. She is in this constant state of panic,” said Hamill, who works in real estate.
The little girl gets upset when she sees “the dying people” — the junkies who look dead whom she thinks no one is helping, the mom said. And she sees far too much vile behavior from adults, including one addict trying to rip out his hair after getting high at a West 42nd Street playground.
“My kid asks me to move,” Hamill said. “We have considered leaving the city. It’s hard.”
The city funneled thousands of homeless people to Hell’s Kitchen to living in the area’s hotels after the pandemic started. The move led to high-profile crimes including the brutal March 2021 beating of a Filipino-American woman walking to church allegedly at the hands of convicted killer Brandon Elliot, 38, who was living at a nearby hotel.
In late August, police charged Nickolas O’Keefe, 33, a shelter resident, with two unprovoked stabbing attacks including one targeting an ER nurse who was knifed in the back.
Exacerbating the quality-of-life decline is state bail reform, which has caused the release of scores of dangerous accused criminals, as well as the decriminalization of drug paraphernalia which prompted the NYPD to stop detaining junkies shooting up in public.
