Tom Minear: Police should have a role at Richmond injecting facility
The future of the North Richmond injecting room is on a knife edge and it’s time we followed Sydney’s lead by getting the police involved, writes Tom Minear.
Opinion
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When two outreach workers were arrested over heroin trafficking in North Richmond last month, the supervised injecting room shut its doors. The temporary closure didn’t last long — just enough time for staff to collect themselves — but there was a moment where some involved in the controversial facility stopped to wonder if it was the end.
The Andrews Government moved quickly, ordering a review to find out how the alleged drug dealing was allowed and backing the removal of North Richmond Community Health’s long-serving chief executive.
It decided not to call off the two-year trial before its June 29 end date. But there was genuine anger and embarrassment among senior government figures about the revelations. After all, Daniel Andrews and his colleagues spent years opposing such a radical facility, then invested significant political capital in it when they changed their minds and approved the trial in late 2017.
“To stubbornly continue with a policy that’s just not working, then that’s the wrong thing to do when there is an alternative, one that can save lives,” the Premier said at the time. And it has saved lives. More than 1800 overdoses have been managed by staff inside the injecting room since it opened in June last year. Many of those would otherwise have joined a death toll that reached 34 people in only 12 months in the four blocks around Victoria St.
To that end, the injecting room has been a success, and the government deserves credit for having had the courage to implement it. But the arrest of the outreach workers — who were allegedly dealing drugs to those they were supposed to help get clean — was not the first strike against the facility. Earlier this year, the Herald Sun revealed two other health centre workers had been shooting up in nearby streets.
That prompted another government-ordered review, this time of staffing policies, which clearly failed to detect the broader drug issues among workers.
Meanwhile, residents are regularly confronted by brazen drug use, public sex acts, property damage and violence on their streets. Having dared to believe that the injecting room would clean up their neighbourhood, some are now so fed up that they plan to move away. Socialist councillor Stephen Jolly, a supporter of the facility, says nearby public housing tenants feel their home has been “ghettoised”.
“It’s like the worst of downtown Detroit has been imposed on a neighbourhood in the world’s second most liveable city,” he said this year. “No one deserves to live like this.”
Jolly wants the injecting room to be moved, as does Liberal leader Michael O’Brien, who says it would make more sense in an industrial area instead of next to a primary school. The Greens, meanwhile, want to keep it where it is, let in children and pregnant women to inject themselves as well and set up similar facilities in other suburbs.
Ridiculous ideas like that would only make the problem worse. The injecting room was opened in North Richmond in the first place because, unlike other parts of Melbourne, seven out of 10 people overdosing in the area did not live there. The “honey-pot effect” existed before the injecting room.
But something has to give. Even the facility’s strongest backers must admit another scandal would make continued government support untenable.
The laws governing the trial include an option for it to be extended for another three years or until six months after the 2022 state election. At this stage, that seems a likely option. Scrapping it would please many residents, but what would they be left with?
The injecting room was opened because, as Mr Andrews says, other policies were not working and people were dying in the streets. Without it, addicts would again be left to fend for themselves.
Sydney’s Kings Cross facility has operated successfully for almost two decades, handling more than one million injections without a fatal overdose, but it took time to transition users into counselling and rehab. There is still a chance that the North Richmond injecting room will make a similarly lasting difference to addicts and to the local community. But the government must make changes.
It could start by drug-testing staff to give confidence that those paid to help addicts are in the right state to do so. Reason Party leader Fiona Patten, who spearheaded the facility’s creation, wants the on-site needle exchange machine moved elsewhere to reduce crowding, which also makes sense.
Syringe disposal boxes in public housing flats should be emptied more regularly so residents aren’t having to step over needles to get into their homes.
Most importantly, a complete rethink is needed on Victoria Police’s role in the injecting room.
In Kings Cross, the facility’s licence is jointly held by the NSW Police Commissioner and the secretary of the health department. Officers can enter at any time, they work well with staff and use their discretion to help addicts while targeting dealers.
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Victoria Police rejected a similar licensing arrangement when North Richmond was set up, arguing the injecting room was a health response, not a law enforcement response. The Police Association says its members have since found that injecting room staff routinely refuse to co-operate during incidents and investigations.
That is not good enough. Police officers and medical staff need to be on the same page for this trial to succeed. Heroin addiction is a health issue, but the trafficking and use of illegal drugs is inevitably linked to other types of crime and that’s why locals are so frustrated.
Police should have a legal stake in the injecting room’s success. It is saving lives but unless it can also help clean up a troubled neighbourhood, its future will always be in doubt.