The Phoenix City Council approved a controversial new law that puts new restrictions in place about providing medical care in public parks. City leaders want to make sure kids don’t find needles while they’re playing — and that everyone can enjoy the parks.
But the move raised concerns from the harm reduction community. Wednesday on The Show, we heard from Scott Greenwood, CEO of Sonoran Prevention Works, about why he thinks this ordinance will make things worse, not better.
"Let me put it this way. There will be fewer calls for service for people reporting activity that they find distasteful in the parks and more reports that require EMT or ambulance runs to people who have overdosed because they did not receive the services," Greenwood said.
So Thursday on The Show, let’s turn to someone on the other side of this debate: Phoenix Vice Mayor Kesha Hodge Washington. She voted for the new ordinance after hours of debate at City Hall — including delaying its implementation so they can talk to stakeholders.
She told The Show, along with her colleagues, she has gotten a host of complaints about what she called medical waste being left in the parks.
Full conversation
KESHA HODGE WASHINGTON: Needle syringes, bandages, wrappers from testing kits. In cases, you've seen large stains of iodine on the concrete of a place, or you would see bandages on a park bench. You would see a couple things that were just made clear in gauze that had been used, that had been clear that it was done by most likely by not someone self-treating, but someone else assisting.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So you're talking about use of needle exchange programs, maybe harm reduction kits, things like that, that are going out to try to prevent things like overdoses, specifically for probably the unhoused population who are in the city parks. But, you know, that tends to leave behind things that, you know, you don't want your kids to find.
HODGE WASHINGTON: That is accurate. And I want to make sure it's clear. It wasn't just needles. It was needles and other, like, open wound care items, clearly used, clearly unsanitary. We were seeing more and more needles. So, yes.
GILGER: And it sounds like you heard from a lot of residents with concerns about that?
HODGE WASHINGTON: Correct. Residents would often share photos or tell me stories about near misses with their kids at the park, and sometimes you can't see it because it's in the grass. Those types of things.
GILGER: Yeah, OK. So let's then talk about the response this got from the harm reduction community. Like, these kinds of things, like harm reduction tactics, needle exchange programs, have been legalized and pretty successful, right, in reducing overdoses here in Arizona.
We've seen that trend happen across the country, although we have seen recent news that Arizona's overdose rate has ticked back up a little bit. Do you worry that an ordinance like this will reverse that, will lead to more overdoses, will criminalize this kind of behavior further?
HODGE WASHINGTON: I don't think so. I think what we saw was some of misunderstanding of what it is the ordinance requires and what it is that we are prohibiting. So the ordinance specifically provides that the distribution of Narcan and emergency lifesaving treatment is not prohibited. So this was more from my perspective, a time, place and manner, reasonable restriction, saying if you're going to do it, you have to submit for a special activity request form similar to you reserve in the ramada at one of our parks for a birthday party.
GILGER: Right.
HODGE WASHINGTON: We want to make sure that the individuals that are there, we know when they're there, who it is, some level of accountability because it wasn't pulled from thin air. We saw photos, we heard testimony, we heard videos. We saw all the things to show that this was a reoccurring problem.
One of the questions that I asked our director was about how many incidents we were seeing of employees being pricked by needles and what happens when that occurs. So my opinion, it was an it's an attempt to strike a balance that provides for and protects our residents, our employees, as well as individuals that are subject to the street medicine.
GILGER: Right. What about the sort of speech parts of this? Like the the idea that you are restricting groups from advertising or promoting or giving out resources to do with harm reduction, things like that in the park that are sort of being interpreted maybe as medical treatment.
HODGE WASHINGTON: So that is a great question. It's actually one of the questions that I asked our legal team. You may or may not know, I'm a lawyer by trade. I've been practicing for some time now, and First Amendment is always subject to time, place and manner restrictions. You can provide some limitations as to where and when certain speech takes place.
But I don't believe that this is restricting any type of speech. This is just simply saying certain materials are not to be distributed in our parks due to health and safety concerns.
GILGER: I spoke with the head of Sonoran Prevention Works on our show yesterday, and he said he thinks this will make things worse. Like, he says that you'll see more first responders responding to overdoses in the parks because, essentially, you're criminalizing, you know, things like harm reduction kits and the distribution of information about how to reduce that kind of harm. Like, are you concerned about that?
HODGE WASHINGTON: I think again that is some misinformation. It's not, we're not prohibiting the distribution of material. Less than 48 hours after the ordinance was voted on with the delayed implementation date. I reached out to those individuals that were part of this community who provide harm reduction services or street medicine team. And I met with a coalition of them to try to understand what they were concerned about.
GILGER: Yeah.
HODGE WASHINGTON: And I think a significant part of this was they were not sure how this applied to the behavioral health care SMI casework that they do. And I think that led me to understand to think that maybe there is some work, some clarification we can do on what medical treatment means.
GILGER: So let me ask you lastly, vice mayor, about that that question of balance that you brought up earlier, like this idea of of who gets to use public spaces like the parks.
I think a lot of people in the kind of homeless service world would say that the Supreme Court decision last year and the action by the city has pushed people out of, you know, the Zone and places like that that were unsafe. But there's not a lot of other places for them to go. And the public parks are one place they can go. And now the city is kind of cracking down on that. Is the city offering enough alternatives?
HODGE WASHINGTON: You actually asked a question that I asked at council. I actually had the Office of Homeless Solutions come up and testify to all of the investments that the city of Phoenix has been making when it comes to addressing our unsheltered residents. We acknowledge that the problem continues to grow. We see that for every one person that we get off of the streets, two more people come in that place. But we are constantly investing millions of dollars into ensuring that we have avenues of service and different types of service from our safe outdoor space where those who are not willing or not ready to go indoors can utilize to we have invested in hundreds of shelter beds throughout our city.
Are we completely to a place where we can reach every need? Not yet, but we are making great strides towards that. And many times what we're seeing is certain individuals are making intentional choices and in life there are consequences for their choices. So it is not to say that we are not trying to assist or help those that are in need. But we have to strike the right balance for advocating not only for all of our residents.
You may have heard and seen a lot of testimony from those individuals in the community that provides street medicine. But I can tell you that we received more comments from individuals saying thank you for advocating for our residents. Thank you for making sure that all of our individuals can use the parks. Kids should be able to play soccer in the park without having to worry about a needle. We have heard enough of this and it also becomes a liability issue.
So as a city, we have to ensure that we're not creating a situation where we are now being having to pay out taxpayer dollars to settle claims that we could have taken action to prevent.
