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Overdose deaths reach six for the week in Trumbull County, investigator says
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Capt. Jeff Orr says he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a week like the one that is ending today — 19 confirmed drug overdoses in Trumbull County, six of them fatal.
In a county with a serious drug problem and 54 overdose deaths in 2014, this week marks a new low, he said.
He suspects the reason is because drug dealers are giving addicts heroin laced with fentanyl, a drug he says is 100 times more powerful than heroin.
Orr, commander of the Trumbull Ashtabula Law Enforcement Task Force, one of the county’s top narcotics agencies, has been in law enforcement 30 years.
Trumbull County’s corner, Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, said Thursday he had seen five overdose deaths this week, and the total for the year would reach a record if the pace continued.
Orr said he has a message for other police agencies, and he doesn’t have time to call a meeting to tell them — investigate every overdose death as a crime.
Mixing heroin with fentanyl kills people, and the dealers doing it need to be held accountable, Orr said. Law enforcement needs to investigate every overdose so that the source of the drugs — the dealer — can be determined.
The cellphone with numbers in it and other evidence to trace the source of the drugs needs to be gathered at the time of the overdose, because it’s not practical to start an investigation two months later, after toxicology results determine what drugs killed someone, he said.
“We don’t know the reason people are overdosing,” Orr said, adding that 19 sounds like a lot of overdoses in one week, but he’s sure the actual number is higher.
The protocols followed by police and ambulance agencies in the county vary widely, he said. Some agencies investigate overdoses. Other agencies transport the person to the hospital and never call out police.
Furthermore, without investigating overdoses, it will not be apparent how deadly the current drug problem is, and funding for treatment will remain at unacceptable levels, he said.