SAFE INJECTING ROOM PASSES FIRST TEST

An internal police memo suggests a softly-softly approach will be
taken to the Wayside Chapel injecting room, telling officers to focus
on "summons rather than arrests" and stressing they should not enter
without a search warrant unless "invited".

Police began gathering evidence at the injecting room in Kings Cross
yesterday after being invited inside.

At the same time, the Premier, Mr Carr, signalled that the Government
was unlikely to legalise shooting rooms for heroin addicts, whatever
the outcome of the NSW Drugs Summit at Parliament House, Sydney, from
May 17 to 21, involving 135 State MPs and 60 representatives of
interest groups.

Six police, led by the Kings Cross Patrol Commander, Superintendent
Bob Myatt, entered the Wayside Chapel about 3.30pm and spent half an
hour taking notes and videotaping. All addicts had left the room,
leaving only the Rev Ray Richmond and two youth workers to be
interviewed by officers.

A police request to remove the lid from a syringe bin was refused
after officers were reminded this would breach Health Department guidelines.

As police gathered information in the injecting room, a young woman
injected heroin while sitting at a table in the window of the chapel's
coffee shop. She was ejected by a private security guard hired by the
chapel. No arrests were made or summonses issued.

According to a copy of police procedural guidelines on the injecting
room obtained by the Herald, police have been aware for some time they
may become "the innocent casualties in a political campaign".

The two-page memo prepared by Superintendent Myatt gives nine detailed
steps to be taken by officers if they are called to investigate formal
complaints about the room.

After police left the Wayside Chapel yesterday, the Upper House leader
of the Christian Democrats, the Rev Fred Nile, arrived in the street
and announced he had sparked the police investigation after making a
formal complaint.

Mr Carr refused to be drawn on whether police should charge the
organisers of the injecting room but gave his strongest indication yet
that the Government is unlikely to countenance legal injecting rooms.

"The starting point has to be our resolution to get people off the
drug, not to sustain them in a crippling dependency on it," Mr Carr
said.

During the election campaign, Mr Carr said his mind was not closed to
harm minimisation programs such as injecting rooms or free heroin for
registered addicts.

He said the injecting room was the work of "well-intentioned people"
but "the way you get proper consideration of shooting galleries as an
option is to win public debate, and they've got an opportunity to do
that at a drugs summit".

"The whole approach has to be a rehabilitative one," he
said.

Mr Richmond said he received a call from the Police Commissioner, Mr
Ryan, before yesterday's police visit but refused to divulge what was
said.

He said that after the visit, police had indicated they would visit
the so-called Tolerance, or "T-Room", again when it opened on Friday
but was confident they would not close it down.

"If they do, we will open up again, but I am quite confident that
these type of facilities will be legal within a very short time," he
said.

He said the Wayside Chapel was "almost embarrassed" by the number of
financial donations and it is understood enough funds have been
received to ensure financing of the injecting room trial over the next
four weeks.

Mr Tony Trimmingham, one of the founders of the project, vowed the
facility, if closed, would simply be reopened.