Help, not harm
City ads: Don’t fear calling 911 for opioid ODs
YOU WON’T GET into trouble for calling 911 if you or someone you are with is overdosing, the NYPD said Wednesday as it unveiled a public service ad campaign to combat opioid abuse.
The $225,000 campaign, which will run for four months, will combine social media ads with old-fashioned posters on ferries, subways and buses, as well as on moving billboards in the Bronx and Staten Island — the boroughs hardest hit by the crisis.
The campaign will also focus on 17 other precincts around the city, police said.
“See an OD,” the ad reads. “Call 911. Save a Life.”
The ad stresses that under state law those calling to report an overdose will not be arrested.
“This is about saving lives,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said. “And this campaign will do just that.”
The Daily News last month A FORMER CHELSEA vegan restaurant owner will spend the next three and a half months at Rikers Island for stealing nearly a million dollars from investors and stiffing her workers.
Sarma Melngailis, 44, was stonefaced Wednesday as she was sentenced in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Melngailis, along with her estranged husband Anthony Strangis, pleaded guilty to scamming four investors out of $844,000 and neglecting to pay her 84 employees at Pure Food & Wine in Chelsea and One Lucky Duck juice bar in Gramercy.
Strangis, who masqueraded as a wealthy businessman to lure the investors, was sentenced to time served after spending a year on Rikers Island. Once Melngailis finishes her sentence, she will have to spend five years on probation and
pay back $1.5 million. chronicled the devastating effects the opioid crisis is having on Staten Island and in the Bronx.
The problem shows no signs of abating.
There were 937 fatal overdoses in the city in 2014. That number jumped to 1,374 last year. So far this year, there have been 439 deaths, 20% more than the number for last year at this time, according to Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. Opioids account for about 80% of all overdoes.
The NYPD has responded by questioning addicts about where their drugs came from in the hopes of busting dealers and identifying suppliers.
And it has equipped officers with Naloxone, a drug that combats overdoses. They’ve made 389 saves this year, including one Tuesday of a 36-year-old man who overdosed in the bathroom of a McDonald’s in Coney Island.
On the same day, however, a 43-year-old Bronx man died in his bed of an overdose.
Susan Herman, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for collaborative policing, said the number of Naloxone saves is undoubtedly higher because the drug can be bought without a prescription and is often given out for free at health fairs — and is thus not easily tracked.
The FDNY, which is also part of the campaign, equips its firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians with Naloxone. So far this year, firefighters and EMTs have made more than 1,000 saves with Naloxone. The number of paramedic saves was not available.