Delivering death
Getting tougher on opioid dealers of all kinds
When a bullet-riddled body turns up in a gutter, there’s no question that a police investigation will follow. When a person dies of a drug overdose, however, police often dismiss it as a case of self-harm and close the file. That’s a mindset that should change so that victims’ families get justice and so murderers — make no mistake, dealers in fatal overdoses are murderers — get taken off the streets.
As the Post-Gazette’s Rich Lord and Paula Reed Ward reported Tuesday, some counties and police departments are more likely than others to pursue dealers in such cases and charge them with drug delivery resulting in death, a first-degree felony inPennsylvania punishable by up to 40 years in prison. While unfortunate given the raging opioid epidemic, the lack of uniformity is understandable. The cases can be complex, the number of fatal overdoses overwhelming, a police department’s resources stretched thin and knowledge about how to quickly gather evidence and identify suspects in these cases lacking.
Then, too, is the inescapable fact that overdose victims — unlike those stabbed or shot to death — had a direct hand in their own demise. Transcending this dissonance may be the most difficult obstacle facing some police departments, but the evolving war on opioids requires it.
Indeed, police and prosecutors should cast the widest possible net, targeting not only the street-level dealers and prescription-happy doctors who can be linked to specific deaths but the pharmaceutical companies, suppliers and fat-cat executives whose reckless distribution of highly addictive drugs fed the victims’ fatal appetite. Murder charges are a powerful tool. Conspiracy and racketeering charges are, too. As Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and his counterparts in 40 other states continue a joint investigation into a handful of drugmakers and distributors, they should aim to bury lawbreakers under an avalanche of criminal and civil penalties. Prosecutors, medical examiners and coroners who treat overdoses as homicides serve as models for a justice system that must do more to stem the body count. Beaver County District Attorney David J. Lozier is setting an example by deploying a team, in cooperation with the attorney general’s office, on every fatal overdose. It gathers evidence and tries to identify the dealer and arrange a quick buy in the hope of tying the drug investigators’ purchase to that found in the victim. Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has held training sessions for municipal police agencies and provided them a disc with instructions for pursuing drug-related murder cases.
Only about 50 of 118 municipal police departments sent officers to the training last year, however — a sign that a cultural shift in the investigation of drug-related deaths remains in an embryonic stage. To accelerate the process, law enforcement training programs, law schools, victim advocacy groups and other criminal justice organizations should emphasize the importance of treating overdoses as homicides and dealers as potential serial killers.