View Full Version : My definition of a Brixton tragedy
2am, guy on his own, shooting up into his legs, outside the Barrier Block....
white rabbit
23-04-2002, 01:06
Absolutely terrible. Why the fuck don't they provide a place where these people can do this in safety with sterile works and medical staff on hand? It's something they can do in other European countries whay not in the UK? It's difficult to imagine someone falling lower than that and it seems there is no agency that is able to help.
Okay, it might not stop this from happening altogether but there has to be an alternative.
Another desperately sad photo Mike. Keep taking them, you might be able to use powerful images like that to help get your front yard cleaned up and to help those people into the bargain.
rubbershoes
23-04-2002, 07:39
The UK has the most drug deaths in europe- a third of the total. This picture helps explain that- no facilities-no help.
Do you think that guy is concerned about clean needles?
:mad:
He well may be concerned with clean needles...
I think it is such a waste of life's time to spend it smacked up. I congratulate the residents of the Barrier lock for not being more proactive in dealing with such focused smackheads who are contemptuous of everyone else.
If it were me living there I fear I mght take rather heavy action against such types even though this would be in the knowledge that they would simply be displaced eleswhere...
Keep takeing the pics and putting them up. I personaly am shocked that someone would inject in plain sight into their legs.
A pic of that on a poster might be a good scare tactic or a fashionable student poster, depends I suppose...:(
Gotta visit B'ton ..........a mainliner who down here pipes but up in Scotland was given clean sterile kits + access 2 B+B....down here treated like dirt.
Alistar Darling has a lot 2 answer for....Benefits????...Nazi's that don't know theyre Nazi's......stop Benefits.....rural+urban.......push people 2 despair........
Itz a Nightmare ...........
So itz back 2 banging on the doors of Brixton again....when will they learn? At least Rachels Mum can see sense.
Sorry I am emotional....but I am a woman and aint no one gonna tell me not to be.
Think hatboy has a good idea.
keep taking lots of pictures. Mike you mentioned in the other thread that these are mainly portuguese people outside your house. Maybe it would be worthwhile getting together a collection of images and putting on an exhibition in one of the many fine tapas restaurants along stockwell road. Kinda put the emphasis back into their local community thing, you never know someone maybe be touched enough within the local community to take on the challenge.
just a thought.
John Wisehammer
23-04-2002, 12:36
Needles: my cousin used to run a big bar in Glasgow> When they were doing up the bogs, the workmen found a big bag of needles in the cisterns. Junkies were coming in and using communal needles in the bogs to shoot up, then going outside again.
====
(Isn't Brixton the local community?)
Originally posted by white rabbit
Absolutely terrible. Why the fuck don't they provide a place where these people can do this in safety with sterile works and medical staff on hand? It's something they can do in other European countries whay not in the UK? It's difficult to imagine someone falling lower than that and it seems there is no agency that is able to help.
Okay, it might not stop this from happening altogether but there has to be an alternative.
Agreed.
So sad. He must be so desperate. Mike I need to see your picture gallery. :(
god that is AWFUL:( .......
Brian: I'd rather take moody pictures of windswept streets, deserted stations and dramatic urban landscapes than grainy shots of junkies doing their unpleasant nocturnal thang, so I've only got a few pics!
I wanted to record just how prevalent and open heroin use is in my area and the levels of desperation addicts reach.
As far as I can see, Brixton has got considerably worse over the past five years with smack/crack use at epidemic levels.
Maidmarian
26-04-2002, 12:41
`Tisn`t just Brixton I`m afraid ----------
Can see kids --- who look about 13 doing that in shop doorways here too :(
A return to registering addicts may help ??
White Lotus
26-04-2002, 12:44
I hesitate to post here, because I haven't been to Brixton recently. (A friend lived in Coldharbour Lane, but he's moved now.)
I think one of the reasons smack use has increased, is prison policy, of all things. The charity I was with works in prisons (doing children's visits etc.) when they brought in "zero tolerance" and random drug testing. Cannabis hangs around in the system a long time, smoke it and you'll show up positive any time in the next month or so ... big risk you get caught and time added to your sentence. Heroin now, that clears in 48 hours. Most of the info we were getting was indirect, from wives and girlfriends but we heard it said a lot of times smokers were switching to smack. A lot of them were worried, they were being put under pressure to smuggle it in.
So blokes were going in partial to an occasional puff, and coming out 6 or 12 months later with a very nasty habit.
William of Walworth
26-04-2002, 14:48
Excellent post White Lotus. I have long thought this, and months ago posted a long rant on the Drugs Forum about how the Home Office's prisoner testing policy is encouraging heroin addiction.
If I went to prison I would either stay totally clean and read books etc., or if I was brave and principled enough I'd insist on smoking ganj and telling them if they caught me and tested me positively that they were encouraging me to become a heroin addict.
this kind of thing. Our comrades in Melbourne, Australia, successfully are part of a campaign which has won significant changes in the approach to dealing with Drugs, particularly Heroin. There is a link to the campaign on their website:
http://home.mira.net/~sp/
There does need to be somewhere in Brixton for people to go, it's not just junkies, but also other substance abusers and homeless & down and out people in Brixton. We have a problem here in the alley where my railway arch is with people injecting drugs, but also problems of alchohol abuse, littering, and using it as a public convenience.
Where are the Council facilities that we pay so much for?
Steve Bush,
Lambeth Socialist Party.
John Wisehammer
26-04-2002, 15:11
Without wanting necessarily to turn this from a drugs/Brixton to a party political thread...Steve: does the LSP run for elections? Are safe shooting rooms part of your manifesto?
Johnny,
Unfortunately, in the local elections on May 2nd, the Socialist Party is not standing any candidates in Lambeth. The reasons are too numerous to go into here. We are standing elsewhere in London, and throughout the UK, feel free to look at our local election manifesto:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/Manifesto.htm
There is no specific mention of drugs policy there, but we certainly support a progressive policy towards drugs, as the campaign in Australia puts it "We do not condone drug use: our aim is to save lives." Drugs policies aren't working, as the photograph clearly shows. We'd say that's symptomatic of society as a whole, and we need to deal with the whole in order to cure the symptoms. But we certainly support initiatives like these in the mean time to save lives and improve conditions for everyone.
Steve Bush,
Lambeth Socialist Party
A top copper from Amsterdam said......"They are still people".......they are considering giving despite an expected increase.
The way people put these people down .. ...us + them..............
In Kings Cross a big Crack/Smack dealer smiled and waved at me......I waved back.....and carried on walking.........but it made me think, she gives on tick......ive been told.............they do try + help eachother out..............they share...............she is human....In Court/press/media she would described as awful when all they are doing is trying to survive.
Prison is also at the CORE of it. It creates a network.........when released the shock of outside society ........well ....they go back to where they can find their own kind. Kings Cross maybe being refurbished but the dealers just move on a few more yards and nothing changes.
Skunk is a class A..............E is a class A......so is smack + crack and as HUMANS we are all equal as well. These are peoples brothers, sisters and children. Hellawell and JONATHON SAVAGES anti drugs strategies have made things much worse..........but why should they care? theyre just lining their own pockets for their own pensions and self promotion.
Clapham Omnibus
29-04-2002, 02:15
Mike its terrible the guy is clearly sick amd needs help.
He has fallen into a pit and needs a help out. And what is the state doing to really help him out and the others like him? Fuck all!
Perhaps Tony Blairs millions might have a little left over to help him?
Doubt it he's not a voter and anyway he'll be dead soon.
One to write off!:mad:
Basically we have a public health issue here. Noone should be using needles in such an environment , for a blood test or whatever.
What get me is how immediately vulnerable a position he's in just sitting there. Works all over the place, trousers around his ankles, in the middle of the night, that would scare the shit out of me. that is deperation. :(
Nag...nag ....also been noticing the press's...inuendo's.......rural+urban........some how connects to hippies?????
When i meant the core........prison.......I meant institutions seemed to create more addicts..... i met a lot who had been in 'care'......as children.........or had been abused.......
and in prison the irony was it was far easier 2 get drugz than outside.........outside i wouldve had to make a few calls....meet etc.......itz called 'birdkiller' 4 a reason..........
The more and more regulations do not seem to change things at all........cept some vans are driving up and down carrying prisoners piss samples the country to some labs for testing......?????
Also back to the phazes where all new schemes/slogans mixed with poverty which involves piles and piles of paperwork.........people /ordering/teaching/lecturing is exactly what they dont want 2 hear.
some even sang....Morrissey's....song shoplifters of the world unite..............the paradox of control is it creates a stronger resistance......The Misuse of CONTROLLED Drugs Act...should be thrown in the bin.
Off 2 visit HMP Brixton today..............the tradegy continues......
but ...........a slight change..........because of progressive people like Paddock.........it will be interesting to see+ hear attitudes today.
I've just had to ring the police again after noticing a very, very erratic young man crawling around the driveway into the Barrier Block, ripping up bits of cardboard and generally looking very unstable indeed.
Of course, what can the police do? He clearly doesn't need arresting as he's probably only a danger to himself - what he needs is serious medical help, detox and counselling along with some viable lifestyle alternatives and accomodation.
Trouble is, to put guys like that back on track would cost a lot of money - and I can't imagine the likes of the Mail being too pleased with that, can you?
Utterly depressing.
The Police are asking 4 treatment programmes. At HMP Brixton...........the staff are trying to cope within an ancient building.......without little new technolgy. The men sit idle all day. I'm told it is far cleaner than Pentonville .........but requests 4 a move 2 Wandsworth.....coz of TV......these men dont have to do anything for them selves.......ie: 3 meals a day.......washing/laundry..............not any practical help...like how to actually eat, sleep.......cook on £40 per week.
Upon release ....they get given a discharge amount...then have to Battle at the Benefits....?????....this 2 weeks is CRUCIAL.....I have known some men left on the streets for over 5 months without a penny support................
Whereas a sex offender gets new ID, accomadation, benefits...new bank account...........etc.
And Benefit Agencies...........on tour of those as well..........up North they have piped music 2 keep clients calm...............down here we are deprived of that luxury?
The Operations Manager has to operate like a circus ring master....he decides......????
I have seen a tramp......take say .......40 mins trying to beg 4 benefits...........the time, paperwork........staff...........then the top operations managers decision.....well it wouldve been far more cost effective to have given the tramp say £20 at the very beginning and simply ticked him off as ..no more 2day.
Many leave desparate.
Finally the IVORY TOWERS crew....busy social servicin, researchin away..why dont they actually sit in a Benefits Agency........and ask????
Use the two institutions 2gether? Save a lot of paperwork in the end.
Grayscale
07-05-2002, 13:51
:(
Don't know what the answer is, but I do know that with massive regret I am moving my family out of Brixton after 5 excellent years of breeding and raising 4 kids here. Only down the road, staying well and truly in South London, but Brixton won't be the manor anymore. (Maybe it's not as sad as the poor guy reduced to stick a needle in his leg sitting on a public pavement, but to me it's still sad. I was born near here and I could have happily settled for good.) This is not *only* because of increasingly frightening street action involving hard drugs, but that's been a strong influence. I'm absolutely libertarian on the drug question but I can't be dealing with addicts openly smoking pipes on the forecourt of the rec when I take my kids swimming at 11am on a Saturday morning... or blatantly dealing on the corner of Atlantic Road and Electric Avenue on Sunday afternoons... or jacking up in the rail station, and just about everywhere else, at all hours of day and night. Brixton is one of the most vibrant and friendly places I've lived in a life of wandering, but it's been made darker and scarier by increasingly numerous, public and aggressive junkies over the past couple of years, and continues to decline today, rock by rock and spike by spike. Running away feels like defeat but I don't believe voting changes anything and in the end moving on is preferable to being scared to go out for a walk through the town with the family at the weekend.
:confused:
Anna Key
07-05-2002, 14:00
Brixton sadness
That is a very sad post. I guess I might feel the same if I had kids. Best of luck in your new manor.
I don't blame you Grayscale: I don't think I'd want to bring my kids up in a neighbourhood where crack dealing and smack injecting is the norm and discarded needles a regular hazard on the streets.
Like you, I love Brixton, but there's no denying that there's been a massive downhill slide in recent years, with an ever-growing community of smackheads on the streets and drug dealing so blatant they may as well chip in together and open a store on Coldharbour Lane ("Rip Off Drugs'r'Us").
The worst thing I've can recall seeing in Brixton was when I was waiting for the BR train early one morning and watched a young (14-ish) schoolboy score some drugs off one of the sleazy dealers that hang around the station.
How fucking depressing is that? A kid! On his way to school for Chrissakes.
Mrs Magpie
07-05-2002, 14:14
For me the difficulty of staying in Lambeth has been the paucity of secondary education provision......My children love Brixton though. They did ask me that if we won the lottery whether we could still stay here in Brixton. The junkies on the street have done more to make up my childrens mind that the world of drug-taking is a world they have no desire to join, than the drugs education I have given them. There is no forbidden alluring mystique...they can see the results everywhere.
Itz not just in Brixton................multiply it....then multiply it again.
My kids visit some estates..............
i see estates........Architecture to me at times = Addiction.
People are evicted...they move on.......and on.....town by town.....
city by city.
For example Council Housing stock at Birmingham.....90,000.............
and it gets bigger+ bigger...............
Why are so many deeply disaffected....homeless.....+cracked up??
On the other hand tho...... car drivers??? have you heard the latest asthma figures? Slowly depriving children of oxygen is tragic as well.
oh no spoke to soon.....suddenly one prisoner disappears..ring all the professionals that profit/leech off an addict.............all of these drive back + forth, ............a maze of misinformation......professionals...power trippers .....dignity strippers............psychological domination + submission roles...as each glorify their moment of authority........they buzz off it. These are bad side effects of work.
They cannot seem to co - ordinate........communicate..........and have attitudes..............oh but it doesnt matter does it?.......itz only a junkie.....what shall we do with them? Send them on a boat 2 America + wait a few centuries so then they can ROB us again!!!!
Oh + and many will also tell you...that they are open criminals........there is a step lower in their eyes.....thats being in a position of responsibility.....then abusing it . But you dont see those and the Police dont have the time or the resources to concentrate on them either.
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