At 37 years old, Michael Thompson was living his dream fighting Toronto’s drug war.
But he ended up falling victim to it, dying of a Fentanyl overdose in April.
“What we know is that addiction and overdose can affect anyone,” Drug Strategy Specialist Michael Parkinson said. “We know that people who are even using just occasionally are at risk of dying from contaminated substances.”
But the Toronto Police Service said, “we don’t believe that we have addiction issues.”
READ MORE: ‘It is a tragedy’: Toronto Drug Squad officer dies of fentanyl overdose
Lynne Raskin of South Riverdale Community Health Centre disagrees.
“Clearly that’s not true,” she said. “We try to ‘other’ everybody else and distance ourselves from an issue that is profoundly prevalent everywhere.”
At an open house at South Riverdale Community Health Centre’s brand new permanent supervised injection site, staff expressed their concern about the death of Thompson and the delay in reporting it to the public.
Thompson died in April, but police only revealed the news of his death seven months later.
READ MORE: At least 2,458 Canadians died from opioid-related overdoses in 2016
“Somebody on their force dies and they still aren’t compelled to act,” harm reduction activist and registered nurse Leigh Chapman said.
She’s been pushing for Toronto Police to be equipped with naloxone kits.
But this week, at a Toronto Police Service board meeting, Superintendent Scott Baptist made his case for why it is not in an officer’s best interest to carry naloxone.
“There’s going to be a lengthy process, a lengthy stressful process that is hard on our officers to justify that they did it and it could also potentially result in civil litigation,” he said.
Leigh Chapman sees it differently.
“There’s a 28 per cent increase in overdose calls and they still aren’t compelled to act. They’re not doing their job.”
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