Stop police attending drug overdose scenes
Recent weeks have seen growing calls to defund the police, which include rerouting and investing this money into different community programs and social services. Here’s one idea where we could start: stop routine police attendance at drug overdoses.
When people call 911 to request an ambulance upon witnessing an overdose, only paramedics should be sent, and the situation should be treated as the medical emergency it is. Unfortunately, that’s not what seems to be happening, at least not in Ontario, with police regularly attending overdose scenes with little obvious rhyme or reason. More often than not, there is no purpose for police to be present.
In May of 2017, the government of Canada passed the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, largely in response to the skyrocketing number of opioid overdose deaths caused by the toxic drug supply in our country. While not a blanket exemption, the Good Samaritan law gives immunity from prosecution for offences related to simple drug possession to anyone who calls 911 to report an overdose or anyone on the scene when emergency services arrive. In so doing, it aims to make people less reluctant to seek emergency assistance during a drug overdose because of the fear of criminal charges.
This law is more relevant now than ever, as the ongoing overdose crisis has been further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in what Toronto Public Health calls the “worst cluster” of fatalities since 2017.
In theory, following the spirit if not the letter of this imperfect law, 911 services should not be dispatching police to overdoses, and the police should not be attending. But, in practice, things are very different. Per a recent study conducted by the HIV Legal Network and Ryerson University, police often show up at the scene, despite the fact that they were not requested and are unhelpful in any medical sense.
This is especially ironic considering there are still certain police departments in Canada that do not carry or refuse to equip their officers with Narcan, a type of life-saving medication that can be used to reverse an opioid overdose, citing costs as a main issue as well as redundancy with services already provided by trained paramedics.
Not only are police unhelpful during these life-and-death situations, but they create roundabout ways to criminalize the Good Samaritans who call 911 for help. Our recent research has revealed that when police are present at an overdose, some engage in surveillance, at times even taking down names of people perceived to be “involved” or simply in the vicinity. Police have returned to these people in the following hours or days to get more information from them, triggering fear that they are now on the police “radar.”
No matter how frequently these incidents are happening, police skirting the intention of the law sends a palpable chill through the very communities the law is meant to protect. Fewer witnesses feel that calling 911 safeguards them in any way, and fewer lives are saved.
Ultimately, it is unfair to force people who use drugs to choose between their personal safety and that of an overdosing community member. With lives at stake, it is critical to restore people’s trust in the Good Samaritan law by making sure police understand and abide by it, upholding its underlying ethos of harm reduction.
Overdoses are first and foremost medical emergencies, and police involvement is unnecessary at best and counterproductive — perhaps fatal — at worst. Far from being protective, police presence can be a public health risk. Dispatching them to an overdose scene must be reserved for the very limited security instances that warrant their presence. Until then, people will continue to be discouraged from calling 911 and more needless deaths will result.
To save lives, the Good Samaritan law must be worth more than the paper on which it is written.