ADDICT'S SUIT CLAIMS POLICE IGNORE NEEDLE-SWAP LAW

James Roe, as he is identified in his lawsuit against New York City,
was 21, homeless and a heroin addict when he was searched and
arrested in the West Village on a spring afternoon in 1999. He was
carrying a syringe from a needle-exchange program on the Lower East
Side.

He said he was also carrying a card showing that he was enrolled in
the program, in a storefront on Avenue C, and could lawfully carry
syringes he picked up there. But the card was of no help.

When he was released the next morning, "I was starting to sweat and
shake because I was way past my last fix." He left with two
cigarettes and a court summons on a charge of criminal possession of
a hypodermic instrument.

And the card that was supposed to protect him was gone, he said: the
officer he gave it to had cut it up.

New York, like many states, carved an exception to its drug
paraphernalia laws when it became clear in the early 1990's that
needle sharing was spreading H.I.V. and hepatitis. But the suit
against New York City, and a similar case in Connecticut, contend
that the exception is often ignored, innocently or willfully, by
officers on the street.

"They get a kick out of it," the New York plaintiff said in a
telephone interview from New Jersey, where he now lives. "They say,
`You stupid junkie.' I know I'm stupid for shooting dope, but they
just like to watch you get sick."

The district attorney's office declined to prosecute, but the man is
seeking damages for his arrest. In his suit, filed in Federal
District Court in Manhattan, he remains anonymous, with the agreement
of the corporation counsel's office and the court, and he agreed to
speak for publication only on the condition that his name not be used.

His lawyer, Corinne Carey of the Urban Justice Center, a Manhattan
organization that provides legal services to the poor, said he would
be in danger from users and dealers if he were identified.

His story and those of two addicts in Bridgeport, Conn., all disputed
by the police, are simple allegations of unconstitutional search and
seizure. But in effect they ask for a resolution of disparate
policies on public health and law enforcement.

"These two cases are going to be a real litmus test of how this
country is going to deal with the whole question," said Scott Burris,
a law professor at Temple University. "It doesn't make sense for the
state to decide we have a policy of encouraging needle exchanges and
a policy of arresting people who have needles."

The people who run needle exchanges hope that litigation will stop
arrests of the people who use them. Even more, they hope that court
intervention will quiet addicts' fears of using the exchanges,
because the consequences of one shared needle can be staggering.

As one heroin addict in California told interviewers for an academic
study, "I would rather get AIDS than go to jail."

In Connecticut, possession of a syringe is legal, but a class action
suit in Federal District Court there maintains that the police harass
people who use the Bridgeport Exchange Program, sometimes charging
them with drug possession on the basis of residue in their used
syringes.

In November, a judge in Federal District Court issued a temporary
order barring arrests of exchange participants carrying dirty needles.

Some medical and legal experts do not support needle exchanges at
all, and dispute the broader strategy known as harm reduction, which
encourages addicts who will not quit to adopt the safest practices
possible. In a few states, including New Jersey, needle exchanges
remain illegal. And even some of those people who run exchanges, most
of them patched together by social service agencies using anything
from shopping carts to storefronts, do not welcome a lawsuit that
could bring a backlash against their tenuous legitimacy.

Their cause has inched forward as exchanges have been shown to reduce
the incidence of H.I.V. infection by about a third among drug users.
"We've seen the proliferation of needle-exchange programs to areas
even like the Deep South in church basements where church members are
handing out needles," said Daniel Abrahamson, the legal director of
the Lindesmith Center, a national drug policy organization.

And starting today, New York becomes the eighth state--Connecticut
was the first--to allow over-the-counter sales of syringes in
pharmacies.

But not everyone will go to pharmacies, although they charge only 20
to 30 cents for a syringe--the street price can easily be 10 times
Higher--or to needle exchanges. In Connecticut, many addicts continue
to avoid both, for fear of raising police suspicion and being caught
with a dirty needle.

Donald Grove, the development director of the Harm Reduction
Coalition, an umbrella group of drug treatment providers that is
based in New York, said addicts "may be extremely wary of carrying
the syringe they need if they've already been busted."

He said that when he started working in "this weird realm" in 1994,
"I talked to a lot of cops, and they said if they want to bust a
person they're going to bust them whether they have a card or not."

Mr. Grove started collecting reports from needle-exchange
participants who had been arrested and charged under the drug
paraphernalia laws, and he faxed more than 100 reports to the city
health commissioner.

Soon afterward, police officials issued a directive that participants
in the city's nine state-authorized exchanges not be charged for
possessing a syringe, even when other charges are brought.

But like most advocates for drug users, Mr. Grove maintains that
harassment continues. And Ms. Carey, the lawyer in the New York
lawsuit, said that in a brief survey she did at the Lower East Side
Harm Reduction Center, where her client got his needles, 15 of the 23
people questioned said they had been stopped by the police in the
previous year. Of the 15, Ms. Carey said, 8 said their cards were not
honored and 4 were jailed.

Advocates for needle exchanges allow that officers are usually
looking not for syringes, but for charges that will stick. Ms.
Carey's client, too, said usually "they see your card and tell you to
get on your way."

Drew D. Kramer, the executive director of the Lower East Side center,
likened addict and officer to Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, the
cartoon characters who punched in every morning, exchanged genial
greetings and then clobbered each other until quitting time. "We've
had cops bring people to our door and say, `Do something with him,' "
Mr. Kramer said.

The arrests "come in waves," he said. "The police will come up with
some crackdown and our folks get swept up in the nets."

Police officials did not respond to questions about department
policies on drug arrests. But Ralph Smith, a Police Department
spokesman, said a person found with a syringe would be held "pending
an investigation to find out why the person has a needle." And he
said that presenting a card--"you can get an ID card from
anywhere"--would not necessarily suffice.

Since New York prohibits only "unlawful" possession of a syringe,
people who buy needles at pharmacies registered to sell them under
the new law will be protected just as needle-exchange participants
have been since 1992. But it is not clear whether they will have to
show, if questioned, that a syringe in their possession came from an
authorized source.

As the plaintiff in the New York suit describes his arrest, he was
stopped on West 10th Street near the West Side Highway while the
police had staked out the area for crack sales. He said he was
carrying one used syringe but no drugs.

He said that he showed his needle exchange card but that the officers
who took him to the Sixth Precinct station house did not call the
number on the card.

At the station, he said, another officer cut up the card with scissors.

He received a court summons listing charges of drug possession and
possession of a hypodermic instrument. Both charges were later
dropped.

The corporation counsel's office has not filed its response to the
suit, but a spokeswoman, Lorna Goodman, said, "He was arrested
because he was shooting up heroin on the street." Ms. Goodman also
said he never showed a card.

She said her office could not provide the arrest report written that
night. A police spokesman said it would take several weeks to obtain
a copy of the report.

Ms. Carey said her client would never inject on the street; because
he "passes well," unlike many addicts, she said, he was able to go
into restaurants and inject himself in the bathroom.

And in the interview, he explained, "I don't use dope outside because
I don't want to get caught."