SIU refuses to change naloxone rules
Watchdog stands firm on requirement it be notified in cases involving the drug
Ontario’s police watchdog is pushing back at chiefs for suggesting their officers might hesitate to provide the life-saving drug naloxone out of fear that it could prompt an investigation by the civilian agency.
In a strongly worded letter Thursday, the director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said the agency would not back down on its expectation that it be notified in cases where a civilian is injured or dies after an officer administers naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
The message comes in response to a request from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) that the SIU dispense with its expectation that it be notified when the drug is administered by officers but a death or injury nonetheless occurs. A central reason the OACP provided was that the policy could discourage officers from acting quickly to save lives.
SIU director Tony Loparco took issue with that purported fear.
“The SIU rejects the contention that the vast majority of police officers might do anything less than act swiftly in the discharge of their foremost duty, namely, the preservation of life, for fear that their conduct will be subject to a fair and independent investigation.”
Loparco goes on to say that such an investigation is “precisely the answer for the small minority of officers who may have fallen short in their duty, a position with which the OACP presumably agrees.”
The back-and-forth about police naloxone use comes as more front line officers in Ontario — including Ottawa, Waterloo, Durham and the OPP — are being equipped with the live-saving kits in the fight against the opioid crisis sweeping Canada.
In a report to the Toronto police board released Thursday, Chief Mark Saunders outlines a proposed plan for “structured deployment” of naloxone nasal spray, including to every front line officer in Toronto’s downtown core.
Opioid-related overdose deaths have more than doubled in Toronto in the past five years, with 186 in 2016 alone.
In his report, Saunders writes that a structured deployment “would in all likelihood assist in alleviating public and officer concerns regarding opioid safety issues, particularly in neighbourhoods surrounding supervised injection sites.”
That deployment would see naloxone nasal spray being carried by all members of the Toronto drug squad; sergeants and detectives in some units across the city; and by officers and supervisors in the front line Primary Response, Community Response and Major Crime units in the divisions where there are supervised injection sites.
Saunders’ report also takes into consideration the SIU position on notification, saying the impact of nu- merous notifications and invocations of the SIU mandate “would be organizationally significant and detrimental to our members.”
But in his written response to the OACP, Loparco said the SIU’s mandate as outlined by Ontario’s Police Services Act, is clear: the watchdog investigates police officers in cases of serious injury or death.
Loparco stressed the findings of Ontario court judge George Adams, who in a 2003 review of the SIU stated that the watchdog should be notified immediately whenever its jurisdiction is “reasonably suspected to have been engaged.”
It is then up to the SIU — not to police services — to determine whether the SIU mandate has been invoked, Loparco said.
He goes on to indicate that being notified of an incident such as a death following the administration of naloxone could result in no investigation being opened at all, or the discontinuation of a probe at an early stage. The expectation that the SIU be notified is also present in other deaths after a police officer attempts to save a life by, for example, performing CPR.
The watchdog is in fact “regularly notified of serious injuries and deaths where the extent of the police involvement is emergency medical treatment.”
“I see no reason to carve out an exception in naloxone cases,” Loparco wrote.
Ian Scott, a former director of the SIU, told the Star that he agrees with Loparco “completely.” Ontario’s legislation establishes that the SIU decides whether an incident merits an independent investigation — not the police themselves.
“The lines are very clear the legislation is very clear and they should abide by the legislation,” Scott said.
The SIU’s position on naloxone differs from police watchdogs in other provinces, including Alberta, B.C. and Quebec, where it’s not expected that police notify them when the only extent of police involvement is administering life-saving measures.
According to Saunders’ report to the Toronto police board, the RCMP in British Columbia invested “a great deal of time” in “educating” the province’s watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office (IIO), on naloxone.
That included providing statistical data on opioid deaths to show that the watchdog would be “unnecessarily overwhelmed and overworked if they invoked their mandate in cases where an officer administered naloxone and the person still passed away from an overdose,” the report states.
It goes on to report that IIO changed its policy on notification, saying that the sole circumstance under which the watchdog would invoke their mandate to investigate would be if naloxone is administered by an officer while the person is in custody and a death nonetheless occurs.
The Toronto police board is scheduled to discuss the naloxone deployment on Feb. 22. Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca