VIEWPOINT: Facing judgement at the doors defeats purpose of safe injection sites

By Jordan Omstead

A police cruiser parks at the steps of a trailer outside the Shepherds of Good Hope, the home of Ottawa’s first sanctioned safe injection site.

The contrast is stark: the cop car represents the long history of criminalizing illness, while the makeshift clinic symbolizes an emerging approach to a public health crisis.

This has been a regular scene outside the safe injection site in Lowertown, according to various news reports this month. While the presence of the cruiser alone would likely intimidate those looking to access the legal drug-taking site, police officers have also regularly questioned staff and clients.

The police presence is an absurdity, and when Centretown opens its first safe injection site at the Somerset West Community Health Centre in Chinatown — likely later this year — the police need to back off.

With opioid-related deaths spiking across the province, the city needs to ensure it’s doing all it can to save lives.

At Vancouver’s Insite safe injection facility, the country’s first, staff have intervened in 6,440 overdoses since it opened in 2003, and 1,781 times in 2016 alone. No one has ever died at Insite.

Meanwhile, in the two weeks before SWCHC officials announced in December they will be expanding their services to include a safe injection site, four people who were connected with health services in Somerset ward died from overdoses.

When talk of Ottawa safe injection sites was percolating in early 2016, Ottawa Police Association president Matt Skof warned that any such facility would spell the end of the community. Police Chief Charles Bordeleau has maintained his opposition to the facilities, citing public safety concerns.

By all accounts, though, the Lowertown community has not “ended” and numerous reports and studies have indicated that safe injection sites have no bearing on drug trafficking in the surrounding area. When Overdose Prevention Ottawa ran an unsanctioned supervised drug injection tent out of Lowertown’s Raphael Brunet Park last fall, even Bordeleau had to concede there was no sign of drug traffickers in the area.

Despite these concerns, even if Ottawa Police follow the lead of Vancouver’s force and establish an informal four-block exemption radius for drug possession around the facilities, there’s nothing stopping officers from targeting drug traffickers.

Safe injection sites can be an important step towards healing for many people who use drugs and harm reduction for every client. In spaces such as the proposed facility at SWCHC, the supervised injection booths exist alongside essential counselling and addiction services.

The health centre, located on Eccles Street, has received a federal exemption from drug laws and the provincial funding to operate the facility, but is waiting on additional provincial funds to renovate the building before opening its doors. No date has been set for the launch.

The notion that safe injection sites condone drug use is unfounded. Rather, it’s recognizing that these services can be an essential intervention for people who use drugs. For some, it’s a step towards rehabilitation, but for all it’s a space where they can reclaim their agency without fear of death or criminalization.

Myopic concentration on therapy as the be-all-and-end-all of rehabilitation, as Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has often argued, also distracts from the often months-long wait times at publicly funded rehab centres across the province.

Any action or policy that intimidates or restricts people from accessing the lifesaving services offered at safe injection facilities needs to go, including a semi-permanent police cruiser parked outside. People who use drugs often do so for any number of reasons and are constantly having to overcome barriers to access harm reduction services.

The last thing people who use drugs need when the Centretown facility opens is the threat of criminalization staring them in the face and deterring them from accessing those services.