Shooting up, sex in street as Richmond’s safe injecting room hits crisis point
Drugs should be handed to addicts in a bid to address Richmond’s heroin crisis, a City of Yarra councillor says. It comes after disturbing images emerged of addicts shooting up and having sex in the streets — but Cr Stephen Jolly says they depict “another day in the office” for locals.
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Disturbing images of addicts shooting up and having sex in public have emerged amid rising tensions over Richmond’s drug crisis and injecting centre.
But City of Yarra socialist councillor Stephen Jolly says the centres should be going a step further and consider the radical idea of handing out drugs to addicts to address the problem.
“Maybe we need to look at places like Zurich in Switzerland, where the health centres actually distribute drugs themselves to registered addicts and have destroyed the illicit drug industry in the process,” Cr Jolly told 3AW this morning.
“There’s a lot of people using on the street, so it’s become ground zero for the industry in this city so that maybe says we need supervised facilities in other places to take the heat off Richmond.
“I think the photographs for Melburnians are a real shock — for people in North Richmond they’re going to shrug their shoulders and say it’s another day at the office.
“The residents are in uproar and are looking at ways to fix the problem.
“They’ve all got different points of view, but the one thing they’re united on is the status quo is not acceptable and change is going to have to happen.”
Premier Daniel Andrews said this morning that the two-year trial was saving lives, and that local residents and business owners had previously insisted that the government open a supervised injecting room after a string of deaths.
He said that children had stepped over “bodies” in the school yard and residents had seen “people dead in the street”.
“We can do better than that,” he said. “Is it perfect? No.
“These are very challenging issues but let’s allow the trial to run its course and then we will be able to make some further decisions after that.”
Mr Andrews said the trial may not be “universally popular” but would be carried out in a “respectful” way.
“We will take into account all the feedback that is provided as well as the medical and scientific evidence about what this means for those injecting drug users,” he said.
SHOOTING UP, SEX IN STREET
Security guards watched a woman shoot up in a carpark next to the injecting centre last week, while a drug-affected man stopped traffic as he stumbled along the street in view of a primary school playground.
Footage has also emerged of lurid behaviour in a Richmond laneway between February 16 and May 5, which includes:
• At least six separate incidents of public drug use, with one man dropping his pants to shoot up in the leg;
• A man threatening a woman with what appears to be a weapon held to her throat, before ‘strip’ searching her and rummaging through her belongings;
• An apparent “drug deal” involving four people, and;
• A couple performing sex acts.
The laneway is lined with homes, and regularly used by residents and families.
A pedestrian and car passed the tense 10-minute strip search on May 5, while a woman arrived moments after one of the sex acts on April 24 as the couple was dressing.
In the 90 minutes after the apparent drug deal on April 29, three people wandered down the laneway, a man played kick-to-kick with a boy, and a girl zipped around on a scooter.
One property owner told the Herald Sun that the injecting room — opened at North Richmond Community Health mid-last year — had attracted drug users “from far and wide”.
“We are not being holy, or not-in-our-backyard type of people,” he said.
“We were for the injecting room because we were hopeful that it would ease the strain on ambulance services.
“But it’s a Band-Aid, it’s not a solution.”
‘TOO MUCH’ FOR RESIDENTS TO BEAR
Richmond resident Tai Yam has found packets of needles stuffed into a drain in his front garden and said he was forced on May 11 to shift bloodied needles from his driveway as he took his children to a basketball game.
“I don’t want my kids to see that,” he said.
The family is now considering moving after four years in Richmond.
“It’s horrible. My kids walk to school (but) they don’t want to step out the door, especially my daughter,” he said.
“She doesn’t want to go out without holding my hand.”
Increasingly wary Richmond residents have called for action on the suburb’s drug crisis, including moving the injecting room, shutting it down, or even opening others to disperse its “honey-pot effect”.
Some say street drug use has become more visible since the injecting room opened, reporting that users sometimes opt to use the needle exchange but shun the injecting room.
A photo from April 12 shows a woman injecting another woman in the arm as she leans against the wall of North Richmond Community Health.
Richmond’s Bruce Maton, who was among the 150-200 people at a community meeting last week, compared drug users to Game of Thrones’ “white walkers from over the wall”.
He told the Herald Sun that they flock to North Richmond railway station to “score” on Victoria St and then shoot up in the street or the injecting room.
“The fundamental design needs to change,” Mr Maton said.
“You are attracting people into a residential area and it is next to a primary school.
“It’s too much to bear.”
The shocking anti-social acts have led to calls for a stronger law and order response.
A spokeswoman for Victoria Police said 15 extra officers had been employed locally in recent weeks and were “committed to reducing the harm caused by drugs in the community”.
“That is why we relentlessly investigate and pursue the traffickers and dealers who are profiting from this trade,” she said.
“However, we also recognise that locking up drug dealers can only ever be one element within a broader approach towards reducing the harm.”
She said local operations had netted dealers in recent weeks, and that ongoing operations would be targeting crimes such as drug trafficking.
Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said the injecting room trial’s “ham-fisted mismanagement” was putting lives and safety at risk.
“A picture is worth a thousand words and these pictures show that Daniel Andrews has totally mismanaged this injecting room trial and the streets of this suburb are dangerous,” she said.
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But the state government has remained resolute on the injecting room trial, arguing that it is working as intended.
More than 650 overdoses have been “safely managed” since the centre opened.
“The medically supervised injecting room trial is about keeping Victorians safe and saving lives,” Mental Health Minister Martin Foley said.
“That is precisely what the evidence shows it is doing.
“The hundreds of Victorians who lose their lives to drugs are more than just statistics — they are much-loved sons, daughters, parents and friends.”
The injecting room’s medical director, Dr Nico Clark, also disputed residents’ claims of a spike in public drug use since the trial started.
“The MSIR has seen a reduction in ambulance call outs for overdoses as well as a reduced public injecting,” he said.
“When the larger purpose-built facility opens in the middle of the year, it will have longer opening hours and almost twice the capacity of the current room, giving more people the opportunity to access services.”
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