Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered a crackdown on a drug-plagued Bronx park in the wake of a Post exposé — and cops are taking no chances.
Marco Lopez, 30, was taking his 6-year-old son, Mark, on a bike ride in St. Mary’s Park in Mott Haven when they stopped for a break at 12:15 p.m. Sunday.
But Lopez made the mistake of picking a bench near one of the syringe disposal bins that de Blasio had installed in 14 Bronx parks in a failed effort to stop junkies from leaving used needles on the ground.
Two cops patrolling St. Mary’s in a marked NYPD van immediately told the father and son to skedaddle.
“It’s strange,” recalled Lopez, a food deliveryman. “He said, ‘Try to keep moving.’ He said, ‘There is a lot of shooting up and a lot of needles.’ ”
In addition to the father and son, cops gave the boot to three men hanging out by a rock outcropping after making them empty their pockets.
Littered with needles, the outcropping is a popular spot for drug users, with The Post witnessing men shooting up there in broad daylight last week.
Following a Post report on the drug activity and the failure of his needle receptacle initiative, de Blasio said Friday, “I don’t accept what’s going on,” and vowed, “We are going to change that reality very, very quickly.”
NYPD sources said brass in the 40th Precinct were outraged that their cops were being forced to clean up St. Mary’s after de Blasio essentially invited addicts in with his needle collection boxes.
“The newspaper gets involved, so the mayor pretends like he cares now … and [cops] have to go there when they have real s- -t going on, shootings and robberies. It’s one of the most violent precincts in the city,” one police source said.
“You know if it was Central Park, it would have been taken care of already.”
A high-ranking NYPD official called the needle boxes “a stupid idea” and blasted the latest crackdown in the park.
“Dope fiends are what they are: dope fiends … They don’t care about the cops being there,” the official said.
The Sunday afternoon crackdown followed a morning game of cat-and-mouse, as addicts repeatedly sneaked into the 35-acre park to shoot up while cops were patrolling elsewhere.
One junkie had a syringe in hand as he crossed St. Ann’s Avenue toward the park, but quickly turned around after spotting cops heading his way.
Last week, The Post revealed that Parks Department workers picked up more than 21,000 needles off the ground at St. Mary’s, compared with just 163 found in Hizzoner’s locked containers during the first six months of the needle disposal program.
Overall, just 11 percent of all needles wound up in the bins, with nearly 60,000 littering the ground from May 1 through Oct. 24, official stats show.
Geoffrey Croft, of NYC Park Advocates, called it “outrageous” that law-abiding park-goers were getting caught up in the de Blasio-ordered sweep.
He said the mayor’s needle disposal program had “opened the floodgates and created a much larger problem.”
“His plan clearly proved he had no idea how to address the needs of drug users or people who use public parks, which should have easily been known. It was a lose-lose for everyone,” Croft said.
City Councilman Ritchie Torres said, “Obviously, it’s unacceptable for law-abiding citizens to be driven out of parks during operational hours.”
NYPD spokeswoman Sgt. Jessica McRorie said the cops had not ejected the people but merely told them “to exercise caution and to be aware that hypodermic needles may be present in the park.”
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said in an email: “The mayor’s made clear that while our approach will always focus on getting people the substance misuse help they need, it’s not OK to use drugs in parks and the Police Department will take violations seriously.”
Additional reporting by Rich Calder and Stephanie Pagones