Police witness suffering on front lines of battle against opioid use

DOWNTOWN UNIT HAS AIDED USERS SUFFERING FROM OVERDOSE

The sheer volume of human suffering has been increasing exponentially in recent months as a new and deadly wave of opioids scythes through local drug users and addicts, says Const. Ryan Darroch, a 15-year veteran of the Lethbridge Police Service, and a beat cop with the downtown policing unit.

“We have not yet confirmed carfentanil (behind the recent overdoses) through our lab analysis,” he emphasizes, “but we have seized carfentanil in the city. A lot of the street people we talk to in the downtown, and all over this city, refer to it as ‘Car.’ It almost looks like that candy Nerds. They tell us they take that carfentanil and mix it with a water solution in those little blue vials people may see on the streets on the ground. They mix that solution in little green mixing bowls, and it breaks down the opioid inside that and they may then draw that solution into a needle and inject it into themselves. Fentanyl or

carfentanil are depressants which reduce your breathing rate, and that’s where the danger comes in with people passing away.”

Darroch confirms he and his fellow downtown unit officers have had to intervene to aid those in the throes of an overdose on more than one occasion.

“We have seen overdoses taking place in a number of different places. At public places, in motor vehicles — it’s really all over the place. And that’s the scary thing about fentanyl or carfentanil: It doesn’t know class. It isn’t just one kind of background. It hits everybody hard all across the city.

“In every community and neighbourhood, there are people addicted to these drugs. I have a few scenes where I have gone to where I have done CPR, and I have been involved in giving some Naxolone doses to people, but our primary role is to get EMS there. They are the experts on this.”

Those going through overdoses, or dying, in the city due to their opioid addictions are never just a statistic to the officers who respond to the calls, says Darroch.

“As a beat cop you get to build relationships with people,” he says. “You know them. You know their first names. You know what has happened in their lives recently which has led them into a negative situation. It is different when you get to help these people because it is not just a stranger ... When referencing our Naxolone usage, I have talked to people on the street who say they have been hit with Naxolone more than 30-plus times. Lots of times we will find people with blue lips or pale-coloured skin because their hearts are still beating, and they are basically having their hearts beating at a very high rate inside, but they are not getting the air into their lungs. In an overdose your heart keeps beating, but you are not getting the oxygen into your blood system.”

The street costs of the drugs also keep escalating, confirms Darroch. Fentanyl, “Shady 80” or “Beans” as it is called in street lingo, used to be the premium drug in Lethbridge until last year, and it now goes for $30-$40 per point (0.1 grams) and methamphetamine, another drug of choice among street users, goes for about $10 per point. Carfentanil, in contrast, goes for about $40-$60 per point and many users need to shoot up multiple times per day, states Darroch.

“So you are looking at an addiction where you need $200-$300 per day to feed,” he says. “If you are unemployed, or exhausted all of your financial means in life, your only option is to step out and possibly look at doing some property crime. This addiction, and our current drug crisis, has a trickle-down effect into our community.”

Darroch is hopeful the new Supervised Consumption Site in the city will help. He knows the tide of drugs flowing into the city can be stemmed by he and his fellow officers, but can never be stopped entirely. Lethbridge is in need of new options.

“With policing, things are always changing, and this (opioid crisis) is just another thing we have to adapt to and overcome,” he says. “And we have already seen a positive impact in the community (from this supervised consumption site). The preliminary numbers of needles are down at some places like the library. We have worked hard with the library to move people involved in that negative lifestyle away from there. That is one of the pillars of our community, and we want to make that safe for everyone. That Supervised Consumption Site has nothing but a positive impact for the community.”

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