Officers from the Stafford Township Police Department responded to a call for a heroin overdose in Ocean Acres on Friday, April 25, at 8:36 p.m. With the assistance of Officer Adam Sherer, Officer Russell Griffin administered the heroin antidote Narcan to the 25-year-old unconscious male victim, who was revived and then taken to the Southern Ocean Medical Center. The victim was released from the hospital the following day, said Lt. James Vaughn.
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| Photo via Newsday Narcan is administered as a nasal spray. |
The Stafford Police Department is the first in the local area to have administered Narcan to an overdose victim since the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office held a mandatory medical briefing in December for the county’s 33 municipality police chiefs on the use and administration of the prescription drug to combat the area’s heroin epidemic. The first Narcan kits were distributed throughout the county this past month.
The Stafford Police Department received eight Narcan kits from the prosecutor’s office on April 16, a week before the recent overdose, which was the eighth overdose reversal by the county’s newly instituted Narcan program. A total of seven others took place the same week, including one in Ocean Gate and one in Lakewood on Saturday, April 26. To date, six males and four females have been administered the prescription drug for a total of 10 overdose reversals, said Al Della Fave, director of public affairs at the prosecutor’s office.
“The program is definitely turning things around for some people. That would have been 10 additional overdose deaths,” he stated.
This year, the county has had a total of 24 overdose deaths, 19 of which were heroin-related. During this time last year, the county had 48 overdose deaths with an annual total of 112. Della Fave said he hopes to see that number cut in half within the next three years.
“We’re not ready to claim success yet. We want to see if we can sustain this downward trend.”
Stafford Police Officers Robert Conforti and Allen Jillson attended the countywide training session on the use of Narcan, also known by the generic name naloxone, at the Ocean County Fire and EMS Training Center in Waretown in February. The training, spearheaded by Coronato, was led by Kenneth Lavelle, medical director of Emergency Training and Consulting and an emergency room physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Officers Conforti and Jillson trained the rest of the local department’s 33 officers in the beginning of April. Prior to receiving the prescription drug, the two officers, along with Officer Griffin, were required to sign a waiver issued by the state Department of Health Office of Emergency Medical Service because they are also EMT-certified. Gov. Chris Christie approved the waiver in March.
“It’s all very recent. It’s all very quick,” said Vaughn. “As far as getting the product, the Narcan to the officers for them to begin using it throughout the county, I think it’s so far, so good.”
The overdose victims and those who called for medical support will not face drug charges, under the Overdose Prevention Act signed into law on May 2, 2013. The purpose of the new law is to encourage people to seek immediate medical assistance whenever a drug overdose occurs.
To date, five drug dealers have been charged in drug-induced overdose deaths in Ocean County, and seven more are expected to be charged within the near future, said Della Fave.
“That’s a very loud and clear message to dealers that we will hold them responsible. The mandate of sending homicide detectives out on the overdoses has been a tremendous success in terms of helping us link these things back to the dealers,” he added.
Della Fave commended the county’s local police departments who are the first responders on the overdose scenes for “doing a great job preserving evidence for those detectives, enabling them to link it back to the dealers.”
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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