San Jose’s top cop and his second-in-command were flagged down this week by a woman reporting that her boyfriend had taken a drug and was not responsive, and an officer is believed to have saved the man’s life, police said.
San Jose Police Department Chief Anthony Mata and Assistant Chief Paul Joseph were in the 500 block of Coleman Avenue when the woman asked them for help Monday just after 12:30 p.m., San Jose police said.
Mata and Joseph called on the radio for officers to respond with lights and sirens on, and for help from San Jose Fire Department paramedics, said San Jose police Officer Steve Aponte. Police said the woman’s boyfriend appeared to be overdosing after ingesting a white powder believed to be fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate responsible for much of the overdose epidemic that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says is killing more than 100,000 Americans per year.
The first officer to arrive gave the man two doses of the anti-OD medication naloxone, also known as Narcan, “which effectively saved the man’s life, according to fire personnel that responded and took over medical treatment,” Aponte said.
Police warn that fentanyl, because of its relative cheapness, may be mixed into other drugs, with lethal results.
Last year, 135 people died from fentanyl overdoses in Santa Clara County, up from 29 in 2019 and 90 in 2020, according to the county’s Office of Education.
In March, San Jose police Officer De’Jon Packer, a former San Jose State Spartan football team running back, was killed by a fentanyl overdose, the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
Joseph tweeted Monday that the woman who had flagged him and Mata down was homeless.
Also on Monday, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced that student Anna Fandli of Branham High School in San Jose had won $1,500 in an annual county poster contest with this year’s theme “What is the Face of Fentanyl?” Young people, including pre-teens, are buying what they think are pain medications on the black market, and are receiving fentanyl, Rosen’s office said. “A child died in this county after taking less than half a pill of fentanyl. Now multiply that tragedy by tens of thousands and you have a true portrait of the plague of our time,” Rosen said in a news release.
Under a 2014 state law, naloxone can be obtained without a prescription, and some local pharmacies can provide it upon request, according to the Santa Clara County department of Behavioral Health Services. “This allows friends, family, and others in the community to use the auto-injector or nasal spray versions to save someone who is overdosing,” according to the department. “Training is available on how to give naloxone, but watching a video online may be enough.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com