ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A pair of Kooyong downsizers that moved into Richmond a few years ago are appalled at the Victorian Government’s decision to make the Richmond Injecting Room a permanent fixture of the trendy inner-city suburb.
Greg and Regina Greenslope told The Advocate that they are disappointed with the decision mainly because it brings people to Richmond that don’t belong there. These drug users, they say, drive up opportunistic crime and bring fear to the neighbourhood that doesn’t need to be there.
“Don’t call me a NIMBY shitebag,” said Greg.
“But I don’t think having an injecting room in a nice place like Richmond is the right thing to do. Dan Andrews lives in Mulgrave, where there’s no injecting room. I don’t think that’s a coincidence,”
“In my day, these druggies just died in the park. They died in back lanes and on the beaches. They didn’t walk like zombies around Richmond and intimidate people.”
Security is also high on Regina’s concerns.
The retired homemaker showed our reporter a snub-nose .38 that she now carries around in her handbag, something she says she needs to do now that her home suburb is chock full of extremely aggressive heroin users.
“When I lived in Kooyong, I didn’t have to worry about junkies attacking me,” she said.
“I think there should be an injecting room, just not here. It needs to be in the city or in a hospital. Not in a leafy suburban place like Richmond that’s full of young families. That’s why I have to carry a gun. I even have special hollow points for it. It might be a small gun, but it’s capable of turning a skull inside out like an over-inflated basketball. This is what the Andrews Government is doing to people.”
The Advocate reached out to the Friends of the Richmond Injecting Room Society for comment.
In a short statement, the organization said that residents concerned with the injecting room can always get a better job and move to somewhere like Kooyong or Toorak if they want to get away from issues facing the city.
More to come.
