Award-winning drug support worker is charged with doing more than 100 heroin deals in streets surrounding Melbourne's controversial injecting room
- A drug support worker is accused of selling heroin to vulnerable drug addicts
- Prosecutors allege he dealt heroin near safe injecting room over 100 times
- The 50-year-old won a major court battle to have the maximum penalty reduced
- Residents nears Melbourne's injecting room are growing increasingly frustrated
- Locals have reported drug users shooting up and defecating in nearby streets
A drug support worker accused of dealing heroin to vulnerable addicts outside Melbourne's controversial safe injecting room has won a major court battle.
Matthew Honey, 50, was one of eight people charged with drug trafficking after police swooped on an alleged heroin ring operating near the North Richmond Community Health Centre.
Operation Sievers detectives allege Mr Honey had carried out over 100 drug deals in the area between September 5 and October 24, 2019.
Prosecutors argued on Thursday his charges should be heard in the County Court where the maximum penalty for drug trafficking is 15 years.
But the Yarra Drug and Health Forum Alcohol and Drug Worker of the Year in 2018 was granted summary jurisdiction to have the case heard in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court, where the maximum penalty is just five years.
The court battle comes as local residents grow increasingly frustrated about the number of drug addicts in the area shooting up in public, pooing in the street and gathering in large groups.
Drug support worker Matthew Honey, 50, (pictured) is accused of dealing heroin to vulnerable addicts outside Melbourne's controversial safe injecting room
Magistrate Keiran Gilligan agreed to have the case go ahead at a lower court due to Mr Honey's limited criminal history and the amateurish nature of his alleged crimes, the Herald Sun reported.
'It was unsophisticated offending,' Mr Gilligan said.
'He used his own work phone and his name. There is no significant evidence of enrichment.'
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Prosecutor Lachlan Cameron argued that Mr Honey's offences should be considered much more seriously given there were allegedly more than 100 instances of drug dealing and that he was employed to help people in the throws of addiction.
But Magistrate Gilligan disagreed and the case will return to local court on September 16.
The legal injecting room in North Richmond has sparked fury in recent weeks, with Metropolitan Melbourne currently under a Stage 4 stay-at-home order to slow the spread COVID-19.
Witnesses have reported as many as 20 people congregating in a park for a birthday party near the inner-city injecting room
A large gathering is pictured outside a safe injecting room in North Richmond in Melbourne's inner-east. Locals have complained about groups congregating in high numbers outside the facility not wearing masks
But despite the lockdown, the community centre remains open and locals have reported seeing meth and heroin addicts shooting up in public, defecating in the street and gathering in large groups.
Residents have also reported used syringes discarded on sidewalks a short walk away from the safe injecting room.
One man said those injecting in the street appeared to be 'immune' to the lockdown and the rules did not apply to them.
'We're in a stage 4 lockdown and they act as if nothing is happening – they could be the ones spreading the virus for all we know,' the resident told NCA News Wire.
'We've seen syringes and human faeces in the streets. Children live around here, it's disgraceful – we're supposed to be minimising the risk of spreading disease.'
One photo shared to a local social media group campaigning to have the injecting room moved showed a syringe discarded in a children's playground.
Pictured: Syringes left discarded in North Richmond. The suburb has its own bespoke safe injecting room where drug users can shoot up under supervision
In a flagrant disregard for lockdown rules preventing no more than two people from gathering outside at once, witnesses reported as many as 20 people congregating in a park for a birthday party.
Complaints about drug users not wearing face masks in North Richmond have become so vocal state Liberal MP Craig Ondarchie has asked for more police to patrol the area.
'That is unacceptable during this pandemic when so many Victorians are obeying the rules,' he said in state parliament.
In June, mother Charlotte Spencer-Roy revealed she regularly found people using drugs in the laneway beside her North Richmond home.
Her nine-year-old son, Angus, was traumatised after discovering a man who had apparently overdosed laying unconscious outside their home just 10 minutes from the injecting room.
'He said ''mummy, mummy there's a dead body'',' Ms Spencer-Roy told Nine News at the time.
Mother Charlotte Spencer-Roy (pictured right with her son Angus) lives just streets away from the controversial injecting room in North Richmond
Ms Spencer-Roy said she was spat on and threatened by a drug addict (pictured right and left) who had been shooting up outside her home in November
Ms Spencer-Roy opened her door as two men scrambled to pick up their drug paraphernalia.
'Why are you choosing to inject here? This isn't the injecting room,' she asked as the pair quickly scurried away.
The men told the furious mother the queues at the Lennox Street injecting room were too long and the 10-minute walk was 'too far away'.
Mr Honey remains on bail and is banned from going within 50m of the North Richmond Community Health Centre.
