AIDS Group Moves Needle Exchange to Private Site : Health: Activists who were blocked by citizens arrests during street corner handout will use parking lot of gay and lesbian center.

Seeking to silence neighborhood opposition to a grass-roots needle exchange program, Los Angeles AIDS activists agreed Wednesday to distribute clean needles to drug addicts on private property in Hollywood instead of on a street corner.

Members of Clean Needles Now received permission from a Hollywood gay and lesbian center to hand out the needles in the parking lot until they can find a better location for the exchange, city AIDS coordinator Ferd Eggan said.

Eggan said city officials were hopeful that the change of location would end a dispute with Hollywood residents who placed several activists under citizen’s arrest at Cosmo Street and Selma Avenue last week for breaking a state law that prohibits needle exchanges.

“I hope this means that in fact the story has come to a happy ending,” Eggan said. “If everything calms down the program can return to serving the people who desperately need help.”

Although some of the Hollywood residents said they were pleased that Clean Needles Now agreed to move the needle distribution site, others said they wanted the exchanges halted.

On Wednesday evening, a half dozen of the residents gathered on the corner of Cosmo Street and Selma Avenue to protest Clean Needles Now’s efforts. Across the street group members quietly handed out maps to drug users seeking their new distribution site located several blocks away.

By 7 p.m., an hour into the program, about 50 drug users had picked up clean needles at the gay and lesbian center.

“The problem is the exchanges are still illegal,” said Simon Lockwood, one of the residents protesting the exchange. “What is really happening here is the citizens are saying, ‘Enough is enough.’

“We can no longer afford to be tolerant. We cannot afford to look the other way. Hollywood has become the red-light district of Los Angeles. This is the last straw. We have to recapture our community.”

But Joe Shea, president of the Ivar Hill Community Assn., said he was willing to look the other way as long as the exchanges were not conducted on street corners.

“We’re trying to reach a compromise,” Shea said.

For the last two years, members of Clean Needles Now have been violating state law by distributing clean needles in Hollywood and other locations throughout the city as a means of reducing the transmission of AIDS through contaminated syringes.

Until a few months ago, most residents were unaware of the group’s activities. However, after a local newspaper disclosed where the exchanges were conducted, residents groups vowed to stop the activities.

As a show of support for Clean Needles Now, Mayor Richard Riordan two weeks ago declared the AIDS epidemic to be a local state of emergency. The declaration directs the Police Department to make enforcement of the needle exchange law a low priority.

Police officials have said that the needle exchanges were already a low priority, but they must respond when residents lodge complaints or make citizen’s arrests.

Noelia Rodriguez, Riordan’s press deputy, said she was hopeful that moving the exchange to private property would end some of the controversy.

“We are hoping at least to be able to see a program implemented that will reach the people who need the services,” Rodriguez said. “Certainly it is the mayor’s desire to have responsible needle exchange program.”