Law Enforcement

Jeff Riorden has enjoyed quite a few interesting career paths, including police officer, paramedic, and a health practitioner in the U.S. Navy before deciding to study at the Duke School of Nursing in Durham, North Carolina. All these careers have one thing in common – concern for public health and safety – which is why Jeff is also a supporter of harm reduction programs that reduce the spread of disease in our communities.

Along with many of his fellow nursing students, Jeff has come out to volunteer with the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition on our outreach trips through drug user and sex worker neighborhoods in Durham where we provide education and testing for HIV and hepatitis C. On these trips, he’s spoken about his experience as a former police officer and how law enforcement could benefit from a better understanding of harm reduction programs. Programs such as syringe exchange are shown to reduce the incidence of needle-sticks to officers by 66%.

The Needle Exchange Program of Asheville (NEPA) is North Carolina’s longest running syringe exchange program. Founded by Michael Harney and Marty Prairie in 1995, NEPA currently provides between 1500-2000 clean syringes a month to drug users and people without health insurance in Western North Carolina. The story of how the program started can serve as a resource to others who wish to implement syringe exchange programs (SEPs) in other parts of the state.

Bob Scott, a former Captain of the Macon County Sheriff’s Office, spent 15 years in law enforcement working to keep our communities safe, and he used his unique vantage point as an officer to speak out against America’s costly and ineffective war on drugs.

In 1968 President Nixon officially launched the “War on Drugs” in response to what was seen as a growing problem of drug use in the United States. At that time, approximately 1.3% of the U.S. population was considered addicted to drugs and the “War” was waged through measures such as heavy policing and arrests for drug possession and trafficking, building more prisons to house drug offenders, and harsh penalties for users. Over 40 years and 1 trillion tax dollars later, the rate of addiction in the U.S. holds steady at 1.3% and drugs are cheaper, purer, and easier to get than ever before.

Summit on Sex Work in the South

Please save the date of December 2nd, 2011 for the Summit on Sex Work in the South.

This event will be hosted by the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, Asheville Sex Worker Outreach Project, Sex Workers Without Borders, Women with a Vision, North Carolina Sex Workers Alliance & Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS) and will be attended by the awesome Human Rights Watch and other allies.

We will be discussing sex work in the South, human rights & sex work, the negative public health & criminal justice effects of criminalization of condoms, advocacy for sex worker related issues, risk reduction for sex workers, drug use & sex work, bad date reporting and more!

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Event Contacts:
1.) Sarah Danforth (828) 337-1257, sarahdanforth@hotmail.com
2.) Robert Childs, (336) 543-8050, robert@nchrc.net

The Negative Effects of Syringe Criminalization on Law Enforcement:

A Interview with Officer Jen Earls

Police officers risk their lives to protect our communities, but there’s one group whose safety they often overlook– themselves. Tight budgets leave many police departments unable to afford sufficient training and equipment to protect personnel from exposure to blood borne disease.

Officer Jen Earls was employed for eight years with the Chicago police department. During her time as a patrol officer and a member of rapid response and special operations teams, she constantly came in contact with dirty needles, broken crack pipes, razors, and other “sharps” that could potentially infect an officer with HIV and hepatitis C.

Sara (alias) is a 35-year-old woman attending school for a Master’s in Public Health, but she has an unusual side job: running an underground syringe exchange program (SEP) in North Carolina. SEPs provide sterile syringes to drug users, diabetics, transgender people and any individual who uses syringes for medical issues, in exchange for used syringes which may potentially be contaminated with HIV or hepatitis. Sara was recently jailed for possession of a syringe inside a biohazard container, which she'd collected from a drug user in order to dispose of it safely. North Carolina laws against syringe possession make even a good act such as cleaning dirty needles out of our communities illegal. But Sara continues to put herself at risk to protect others from diseases that can be transferred from used syringes, such as HIV and hepatitis C.

One in three law enforcement officers in areas without harm reduction programs can expect to be pricked by a potentially infectious needle during their tenure. With the risks that officers run every day to protect our communities from harm, it’s important that community members also do their part to protect the officers, for example, through the implementation of harm reduction programs. Syringe exchange programs (SEPs) that help keep dirty needles off our streets and parks are shown to reduce the risk of needle pricks for officers by 66%.

Corporal D.A. Jackson has served in law enforcement for over 26 years, 18 in the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department. She has seen firsthand the need for effective harm reduction programs in North Carolina and the benefits of these programs to law enforcement.

Your state Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin and his highly-trained experts at the Department of Insurance have given ample examples of their dedication to stamping out insurance fraud this week.