Hundreds of hypodermic needles dumped outside Seattle coffee shop

KIRO 7’s news director went to get coffee at Uptown Espresso in Downtown Seattle and discovered hundreds of hypodermic needles dumped on the street in front of the shop.

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“They’re strewn all over the street. They’re up on the curb,” Gary Horcher, a KIRO 7 News reporter who was at the scene, told Dori Monson. “There were hundreds of these needles. Many of which had been plunged. Bright orange caps. Pretty ghastly.”

The city was contacted, and within several minutes someone from Seattle Public Utilities arrived to clean up the needles, Horcher said.

“It turns out, some of them actually got down the sewer grate and into the sewer. So SPU workers had to come down and there’s protocol for that too. They had to pick those things out with a tong,” he said.

Horcher spoke with Shilo Jama, the director of the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, which provides clean needle exchanges and other services for drug users.

In one sharps disposal container that Jama maintains near the University of Washington campus, he said he receives 2,000 to 4,000 hypodermic needles per week.

“We tried to do a little bit more research of where should you take these needles if you have one or you have hundreds of them, regardless of if you’re a heroin addict or if you’re a diabetic,” Horcher said. “It is illegal to put a used needle in the garbage.”

Several other sharps disposal containers exist throughout the city as part of a city pilot program started about a year ago. There’s one at Dr. Jose Rizal Park. There’s another one at Freeway Park.

Over the course of the pilot program, nearly 41,000 needles have been collected.

“It’s almost 2.6 miles if you stretch those needles end to end,” Horcher said. “It’s really frightening.”

Although there are many conversations to be had about how to help people to stop using drugs altogether, Horcher said supporters of the pilot program say it will help to keep the streets safer and cleaner.

“The advocates who are pushing the city to do more with this are saying we should have these things every couple of blocks with bright signs showing where to put these things,” Horcher said. “I think the most practical thing I think I was looking at was how to keep the needles off the street.”

Watch the KIRO 7 News report below. Listen to Dori’s full interview with Gary Horcher here.