Are Police Interfering With Needle Exchanges?

Officials with Clean Needles Now, a Los Angeles exchange program, have filed a third complaint with the board of police commissioners, claiming that city cops are intimidating program workers and participants. Shoshanna Scholar, executive director of the program, says police have carried out six searches of program sites, confiscated a man's needles, and made an arrest of a program participant. She says these activities intimidate program participants and keep injection-drug users from visiting the site, increasing the risk that they'll share needles and expose themselves and others to HIV, hepatitis, and other blood-borne diseases. Los Angeles police chief William Bratton calls the allegations 'totally bogus' but sent a memo to the board stating that police officers will be informed of the sites where the exchange programs operate and be reminded that department policies are meant to support the programs.