WATCH: You may be shocked to see what’s in a downtown La Crosse needle-exchange bag

“Everything except the drugs,” says assistant police chief

Apparently, even the police can be shocked at what they see on the streets sometimes. And not just from criminals. 

La Crosse assistant police chief Rob Abraham stopped in the WIZM studio Wednesday afternoon with a bag from the needle exchange in downtown La Crosse that one of his captains recently picked up. 

You may be just as surprised as I was with the contents of the bag, that included much more than just clean needles.

“I was very shocked when I saw what you actually get at the needle exchange,” Abraham said of his first time seeing the contents of the bag. “Really, it was everything except the drugs.”

Abraham says the city is working on possible solutions for hypodermic needles that are increasingly turning up in places like parks, parking lots and backyards.

“A little aluminium spoon, a metal wire to hold it … it’s a basically one-stop shop,” Abraham said as he pulled item after item out of the bag. “If there’s a drug dealer standing outside the needle exchange, you had everything you needed to inject.

Other items in the bag included, of course, hypodermic needles, along with alcohol prep pads, matches, stuff to mix heroin, condoms, antibiotic creme along with instructions on best practices for injecting drugs and more.  

All of it handed out while La Crosse struggles to deal with what has been called a heroin epidemic.