Worcester PD Late to Implement Narcan, Loses Lives in the Process

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Nicholas Handy, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

While the Worcester Police Department has now been equipped with Narcan – a opiate overdose reversal tool – questions still remain as to whether or not the police force could have helped additional citizens, had they been equipped with the drug earlier in the year.

While not a treatment for those addicted to heroin and other opiates, Narcan has been praised as a tool that can bring back people who have overdosed back from the brink of death. According to the Worcester Police Chief, Gary Gemme, the city had been trying to bring the drug to the city for six months, but the reversal drug ultimately didn’t come until after the epidemic had already started.

“We have been working on providing Narcan to all of our officers for about six months and we’ve had to undergo training for our entire police department,” said Chief Gemme during a press conference when the city initially addressed the heroin epidemic. “We believe that we will have Narcan in the hands of our officers in about two weeks.”

Worcester recently saw a string of suspected overdose deaths – 10 within the first week of August. Since the Worcester Police began to use Narcan in the city on August 8th – a few weeks ahead of the scheduled start date - they have administered Narcan four times, saving three lives.

A Helpful Tool

Narcan has been used by municipal departments since 2010, when Quincy, Massachusetts became the first to outfit their officers with the overdose reversing drug.

Statistics show that many of the cities that equip their first responders with Narcan have been successful in reversing a number of overdoses. In a three-year period, Quincy Police had reversed 188 overdoses. Worcester’s AIDS Project Worcester's Overdose Prevention and Narcan Distribution Program has reported over 100 reversals in the past few years that the program has been running. And from a statewide perspective, the Department of Public Health reports over 3,600 reversals from November 2007 to mid-July of 2014 between affiliated bystanders and first responders.

While Narcan is not an addiction treatment, it is certainly a drug that can give people who use opiates a fighting chance to live another day.

“It’s the best way to keep people alive when they have overdosed,” said Maryanne Frangules, Executive Director of Massachusetts Organization for Addition Recovery (MOAR). “Narcan has really taken off in the past seven years and it has saved many lives. There is a saying that goes “where there is breath there is hope;” there is no way for these addicts to get into recovery if they are dead.”

A Poor Media Strategy

Until very recently, the Worcester Police Department has been mum on the heroin epidemic; not being very open with the public about what exactly is going on.

While announcing that they will engage in a social media question and answer session on September 2nd, many have come to question why the police haven’t kept the public more in the loop on the situation. After all, keeping the public in the dark is one way to make a big problem reach a crisis situation, as recently seen in Ferguson, Missouri.

“When it comes to police and media or fire and media, we have to work together, and my advice to every police and fire chief is to show as much kindness, patience, and consideration to reporters as possible,” said John Guilfoil, whose PR firm John Guilfoil Public Relations LLC deals primarily with police and fire department media relations. “Otherwise, small problems look big and big problems look massive. Communication with media is likely the most visible way police and fire departments reach the public during a crisis.”