I live dowtown in a major city where drug dealing is a somewhat common occurrence. This afternoon while going out with our dogs, my daughter and I noticed a drug addict sitting down near the entrance of our bulding, injecting drugs.
He was quite clearly homeless, but minding his own business and not at all agressive. More problematic, we noticed several used synringes in the bush next to him…
I thought about calling the police, but then… what? He’s not bothering anybody, and he’s clearly sick. On the other hand, he took ages to find a vein (he was still at it when I came back two hours later…), which can be a shock for the many kids in the neighbourhood, and the used syringes are obviously a problem.
Would you have called the police? Could I have done anything?
Well, the situation is clearly different here: the guy is homeless and just landed here for whatever reason.
Are there laws against injecting drugs in public? The police clearly doesn’t care (and, to be fair, can’t do much) about the drug dealing in the city centre.
I don’t know, but I can see a situation where people find that the location is ‘friendly’/‘welcoming’ of drug use. Then more people gather there, then maybe someone breaks into the house and you get squatters.
Then there’s the danger to kids around from the discarded needles, or the drug users themselves.
I used to work with a nurse who worked with the appropriate social services working with the drug addicts. Most of them are already known by their services, but it’s a (small) population which is very difficult to help. Most of them refuse social help, or want to keep it to a minimum.
You want you and especially your daughter to continue to see and normalize someone injecting hard drugs on your apartment building doorstep? Someone you do categorically not know or trust or do not know if they really are ‘harmless’, out of their mind where people walk out of the door? Is this even really a sensible question?
Of course call the police if you don’t want that happening on your actual doorstep.
A couple friends of mine were undercover Zurich Kripo. I once asked one about this, and he said that if he saw someone shooting up or even dealing, he simply wouldn’t care, as he had REAL work to do (looking for certain people and BIG fish).
They used to fly armed on SwissAir flights doing the same thing.
Isn’t that fairly obvious, though? The Kripo is unlikely to get involved with petty crime, and will likely refer it to the local bobbies to deal with, if at all. Likewise the local bobbies are unlikely to get involved with “BIG fish” during their day-to-day.
If only it was that simple… Heroine addiction is notoriously difficult to treat, in part because the addiction is generally linked to massive social and psychological issues.
The guy down my place looked like he had many years of abuse behind him, and probably tried or was encouraged to try mutliple programs to help with it.