The heads of the Ontario Association of Police Chiefs and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) are at loggerheads over police having to report to the unit when nalaxone is used.
The SIU investigates police anytime a member of the public is seriously injured or hurt.
At the heart of the dispute between the chiefs of police association and the Special Investigations Unit is whether police have to report injuries and fatalities when police use naloxone trying to save an individual experiencing an opioid overdose.
Bryan Larkin, president of the Ontario Association of Police Chiefs, sent a letter to the head of the SIU saying Ontario should adopt the same stance as British Columbia.
The letter says in part: “…after a person is revived, if the police had to use force on the individual to restrain or arrest them, then the SIU should properly be advised to see whether they will invoke their mandate on a case by case basis.”
Tony Loparco, the SIU director, responded with a letter of his own saying all instances involving injury or death should be reported when naloxone is used.
“In point of fact, the SIU is regularly notified of serious injuries and deaths where the extent of police involvement is initially reported to have been limited to emergency medical treatment. I see no reason to carve out an exception in naloxone cases.”
- B.C. Sikh leader ‘vindicated’ by arrest of Indian nationals in Nijjar killing
- London Drugs remains closed, says it is reviewing billions of lines of data
- How toy guns brandished by Ontario youth in ‘assassins game’ is prompting real fear
- Trump trial hears recording discussing hush money scheme: ‘What do we got to pay?’
Kingston police’s Deputy Chief Antje McNeely says the SIU’s stance is over and above what citizens in similar circumstances would face.
“It’s like any other person having naloxone or using naloxone on a person that’s having an overdose situation, so it makes sense that we would be treated the same as anybody else.”
McNeely hopes the dispute will be settled with clarification from the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services which oversees policing in Ontario.
The issue will become more pressing as municipalities and the province wrestle with the opioid epidemic.
Frontenac County Paramedics’ Gale Chevalier says their use of naloxone has more than doubled between 2015 and 2017.
She adds, on average, paramedics use the life-saving drug three to four times a month.
“That doesn’t include the calls where we go where the patients have already received the Narcan through another means.
There are a lot more overdoses than just the ones that the paramedics are giving Narcan.”
According to the Coroners Office of Ontario, last year, 10 people died from opioid overdoses between May and July in the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington region — a 68 per cent increase over that same time in 2016.
Comments