19,500 kits to be purchased with forfeiture case money, to be carried primarily by officers on transit, and housing duty.
The NYPD will start issuing heroin overdose antidote kits to its officers this year, in a move that will hopefully stem the ever-raising tide of heroin overdose-related deaths.
The force will get 19,500 kits, worth about $1.2 million, paid for by the New York State Attorney General’s office with “civil and criminal forfeiture” case money (police auction money, I think). The kits cost about $60 each.
The kits, which are part of the NY AG’s Community Overdose Prevention (COP) program, come with two syringes and two inhalers full of opioid overdose-fighting naloxone, a drug also sold under the brand name Narcan.
How does naloxone work? Keeping in mind that I am in fact [b]not[/a] Doogie Howser, M.D., naloxone and Narcan are non-addicting medications that “counteract life-threatening depression of the central nervous system and respiratory system, allowing an overdose victim to breathe normally.”
New York City isn’t the first metropolitan area to issue these kits to its cops. Officers in Quincy, MA have been carrying similar kits since Q3 2010. In the 221 instances where Quincy officers have used the kits in the field, 211 opioid overdose cases were successfully reversed — good for a 95 percent success rate.
Source: AP/NY Post
