ANGER AS PRE-POLL RAID SHUTS HEROIN 'SHOOTING GALLERIES'

On the eve of the State election police have shut down three "shooting
galleries" in Kings Cross in a move which health and drug workers say
will drive heroin users and dealers back onto the streets.

While illegal, the shooting galleries have operated for years with the
knowledge of police and have been credited by ambulance officers as
having saved "thousands of lives".

The mayor of South Sydney, and Labor candidate for Bligh, Councillor
Vic Smith, last night expressed concern about the closures and said
the alternative would be for people to "shoot up on the street".

Cr Smith, who is campaigning for the introduction of safe injecting
rooms, said he would today raise with the Police Minister, Mr Whelan,
the reasons behind the crackdown.

Senior Kings Cross police visited Porky's, the Tudor Hotel and the
Pleasure Chest and told the operators that they would be charged if
they continued to allow people to shoot up on the premises, as they
had done for several years.

The crime manager at Kings Cross police, Detective Inspector Jeff
Steer, said there had been "no pressure whatsoever" from above to act
now and that last week there had been two overdose deaths in the
injecting rooms and police felt they had to act for "operational reasons".

Inspector Steer said police had concerns that dealers were operating
on the street in front of these premises and that the users simply
bought their drugs and then used the injecting rooms inside.

"It was our view that these so-called shooting galleries were causing
the problems themselves and we moved to shut them down," Inspector
Steer said.

The operators of the premises, who supply clean needles and a room to
inject for $5 to $10, were told they would be charged with aiding and
abetting the self-administration of a prohibited drug if they continued.

Dr Raymond Seidler, a Kings Cross GP, and other health workers who
would not be named, said the move could drive drug using back onto the
streets.

"Do we really want to go back to a situation in the Cross where every
side street is filled with people shooting up?" he said.

In 1997, when the State Government's Joint Select Committee into Safe
Injection Rooms was holding hearings, an ambulance officer, Mr Jim
Porter, gave evidence that the injecting rooms had "saved thousands of
lives".

The Opposition spokesman on police, Mr Andrew Tink, said that he was
surprised at the crackdown since police had not been told to target
drugs or the safe injecting rooms specifically.

"We have been hammering this issue for some time and it seems only on
the eve of the election that something happens," he said.