Guards at London jail save inmate from overdosing

It’s second time in less than a week that life-saving drug has been administered

Another inmate at London’s provincial jail was saved from an overdose over the weekend, correctional officers say.

The same weekend, an inmate assaulted two officers, a union leader said.

The assaults are typical, the overdoses are dangerously close to becoming so, according to workers at Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC) who contacted The London Free Press.

On Dec. 29, EMDC staff had to administer the anti-overdose drug naloxone twice to an inmate, one officer said. A second officer confirmed an inmate was saved from an overdose.

The overdose occurred in the facility’s regional intermittent centre — which houses those serving weekend sentences — where inmates are checked for hidden drugs by a new X-ray body scanner.

As welcome as the new scanners are, they may not pick up small amounts of drugs packed loosely, another correctional officer said.

But inmates coming in the intermittent centre may also have injected drugs before arrival, making matters worse, that officer said.

In the past year, officers have probably saved about four inmates from overdoses by using naloxone, officers estimate.

There were two suspected overdose deaths at EMDC last year, compared to one in each of 2015 and 2016, and none in the previous six years.

The increasing risk of overdoses from fentanyl sweeping through Ontario has shadowed several delays in the jail getting X-ray scanners promised by the province in the spring of 2016.

Although the intermittent centre received a scanner, the main facility has yet to get one.

Last week it was reported that the province will miss its deadline, again, for putting an X-ray body scanner at the EMDC.

The scanner is expected to be operational in “the coming weeks,” Greg Flood, spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said in a recent email.

The province has failed several times to meet its deadlines for the scanner, Progressive Conservative corrections critic Rick Nicholls has charged.

The Liberal government announced in May 2016 that over the next two years Ontario’s 26 jails and detention centres would get new body scanners that can detect ceramic weapons and drugs hidden inside body cavities.

London’s jail was earmarked as one of first three facilities to get scanners. But in the fall of 2016, it was learned the promise meant only that the new regional intermittent centre at EMDC would get a scanner. The centre is in a separate building at the jail on Exeter Road and houses inmates serving weekend sentences. The main facility wouldn’t get a body scanner until this year, officials said then.

In October 2016, inmate Justin Thompson, 27, died of an overdose while finishing a 21-day sentence for breaching bail conditions. Another inmate went to hospital in critical condition, but survived.

For now, all people heading into EMDC are going through the intermittent centre admission area, where the one scanner was installed earlier, the ministry said.