This section of the toolkit was developed using information gathered through interviews and focus groups with public safety stakeholders, who represent law enforcement, including local police and the sheriff’s department.
Below you will find the promising overdose response strategies identified by public safety stakeholders in Genesee County. Each promising strategy is numbered, along with stakeholder identified barriers to accomplishing the proposed strategy, and how the System for Opioid Overdose Surveillance (SOS) may assist stakeholders’ ability to accomplish each promising strategy.
Promising Strategy 1: Monitoring Trends for Resource Allocation
Public safety stakeholders consistently express the need to implement strategic patrol in areas of high overdose incidence. Planning patrol not only assists with limited staffing but can be vital to increasing potential survivability from an overdose. With finite resources and staff, the ability to quickly locate areas or regions with a particular need for police or EMS response can decrease response times and improve the odds of survival in an overdose situation. Public safety stakeholders also express the importance of conducting data-driven patrol and having access to a system that gives them the opportunity to monitor overdose trends to help prevent future incidents.
Barriers to Monitoring Trends for Resource Allocation
Public safety stakeholders highlight the importance of being able to strategically patrol in high overdose incidence locations. They note that providing additional units to a high overdose area would have the potential to prevent others from using or overdosing. Given limitations to the number of available officers, optimizing where they focus efforts is critical.
Public safety stakeholders identify barriers to opioid overdose response that affect both their ability to patrol and to monitor opioid overdose trends:
- Limited finite resources (i.e. staff, patrol officers, or emergency response personnel): Inability to reliably achieve a timely response due to limited resources represents the greatest barrier to respond to the sometimes overwhelming number of local overdose incidents.
- Insufficient travel time: Time and distance are two vital components to overdose response. Due to the tight response time window for reviving an individual, even a short distance poses significant challenge for rescuers.
- Law enforcement drug seizures: Oftentimes, narcotics units are unable to identify the illicit drug(s) involved in an overdose and where they were purchased. Often the location of drug use is different from where the drug was purchased. This can be a challenge for public safety attempting to locate and remove drugs from the community.
“Our goal is not incarceration, our goal is rehabilitation and to get people off this stuff…And then it will help with…dedicating our efforts, because, unfortunately, it boils down to we only have so many people and we can’t be everywhere.”
Public Safety Stakeholder
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Monitoring Trends for Resource Allocation
Overburdened staff is one of the primary barriers to increasing strategic patrol in specific areas with high incidence of suspected overdoses. When asked about potential challenges with implementing responses, our stakeholder reported, “Well, as far as our department is concerned cuz we’re kinda busy, so we may not able…sometimes we may not be able to just concentrate on that specifically.” This demonstrates how law enforcement is not always able to designate time to patrol specific areas impacted by the opioid epidemic.
Near Real-Time Data Impact
Even with limited staffing capabilities and tight resources, near real-time data can provide public safety officials with the information they need to optimize their opioid overdose response and prevention efforts. With access to near real-time data, public safety stakeholders discuss being able to not only respond more quickly to areas identified as a hot spot for overdose, but to also monitor trends in overdose. Through monitoring trends, public safety stakeholders can effectively and proactively staff their patrol teams and direct them to locations in need of greater response to prevent opioid overdose.
Public safety stakeholders also use the SOS reports to analyze patterns in opioid overdose trends in particular locations throughout time. Equipped with these trend reports, they function as a data-driven organization, sharing the dashboard and reports with all public safety officials that collaborate to reduce overdose in the community.
“The weekly reports helped direct staffing into the concentrated areas that had a significant number of overdoses. For instance, the report I’m looking at has a concentration of overdoses in the city of Flint. Knowing that, we were able to put some staffing in that area to help reduce the response times and help increase…hopefully, increase survivability.”
Public Safety Stakeholder
Promising Strategy 2: Innovative Solutions in Public Safety
Improvements to current overdose response are vital both to increasing survivability after overdose and decreasing the amount of opioid use in the community. Innovative ideas for using near real-time data that exploit the shared etiology of opioid overdose and multiple other community health problems (e.g., violence; human trafficking) are important to consider as opioid use and overdose persist in communities across Genesee County. Some innovative solutions mentioned include using near- real time overdose data to follow human trafficking trends, working to develop a near real-time surveillance system for other public health and safety concerns, and using data to encourage public safety collaboration with the community.
Barriers to Innovative Solutions in Public Safety
Many barriers to the innovative public safety solutions relate to their status as new, undeveloped ideas as well as general distrust of public safety, specifically:
Following human trafficking trends via opioid use and drug sales is a complex task: Although public safety stakeholders have attempted to address this challenge, the issue involves many moving parts. Since opioid use and drug sales often follow human trafficking, yet represent only a piece of the puzzle, stakeholders have not consistently used overdose data for this purpose.
Surveillance systems to track other public health and safety concerns are undeveloped: Systems that may track other public safety and public health concerns have yet to be developed in Genesee County. Stakeholders have begun to generate ideas for other near real-time surveillance systems, including a surveillance system for incidents of firearm violence.
Distrust of law enforcement agencies by those who witness opioid overdose: The clearest barrier to implementing innovative solutions is the persistent distrust of law enforcement agencies by those who experience or witness an overdose. As one public safety stakeholder expressed, “The barriers we’re running into with the 911 responses is people just not trusting police or not wanting to give the information that they’ve overdosed because they’re afraid they’re going to get in trouble…so it dampens the effort of us trying to do education along with enforcement.” This demonstrates the challenge law enforcement may face when attempting to help a person who is experiencing an overdose.
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Innovative Solutions in Public Safety
The SOS dashboard and reports are an important aspect in all of the innovative solutions described above. First, the shared etiology of multiple community health problems suggests that using the SOS dashboard to monitor trends in opioid overdose could also inform other things, such as human trafficking. In the absence of other data that speaks directly to those issues, which are likely more difficult to ascertain directly with data, SOS may provide a critical basis for stakeholders to work with other law enforcement departments, such as their detective bureaus, to assist in establishing trends within human trafficking to aid in prevention. Public safety stakeholder’s interest in developing systems similar to SOS to report and map other public health concerns is an important next step to brainstorming what other responses can be enhanced through the use of real-time data. In addition to enhanced response to overdose, near real-time data can help improve the relationship between public safety and the community. Through knowing which locations need the most response and support, public safety can identify education opportunities and partner with organizations to foster a better relationship with these community members.
Impacts of COVID-19 on Public Safety Response
Public safety stakeholders were not greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stakeholders mentioned that they already had safety protocols put in place, including donning personal protective equipment (PPE) when entering a residence and screening individuals prior to entry. The PPE and other protocols become critical in the case of an unconscious overdose victim who cannot answer screening questions.