{"id":24327,"date":"2016-01-20T09:38:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T15:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=24327"},"modified":"2016-01-20T09:38:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T15:38:43","slug":"chicago-police-still-dont-have-overdose-reversing-naloxone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chicago-police-still-dont-have-overdose-reversing-naloxone\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Police still don’t have overdose reversing Naloxone"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jack Adams <\/strong><\/p>\n

Cook County Police Chief John Roberts\u2019 son died of a heroin overdose in 2009, and ever since then he\u2019s been saving other heroin addicts from the same fate. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll my life I\u2019ve been trained to first and foremost save lives,\u201d said Roberts.<\/p>\n

After his son\u2019s death, Roberts said he went through a paradigm shift.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since then I\u2019ve been looking at the entire drug problem in our nation at a different angle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Roberts testified during the hearings for Illinois House Bill 0001, which passed in 2010, allowing non-medical personnel to use Naloxone, a drug that if injected into someone overdosing on opiates, will revive them.<\/p>\n

In other major cities like Boston, police are provided with intranasal Naloxone for when they find an overdose victim. Currently, only a handful of Cook County police departments use Naloxone, not including the Chicago Police.<\/p>\n

Roberts\u2019 department, which has 128 officers, will be the first to receive Naloxone from a Cook County grant supplying 12,000 kits to several departments. He said equipping the Chicago police with Naloxone will not be easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect that there is going to be some delay, but they will do it. They have to,\u201d said Roberts.<\/p>\n

For now, the Chicago Fire Department and paramedics are the only personnel with Naloxone.<\/p>\n

Natalie, who, to protect her identity, chose to conceal her identity, uses heroin. She said she has been revived from overdoses several times with Naloxone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went black. And then all of a sudden I was really groggy, waking up,\u201d said Natalie. \u201cA lot of people say they get immediately sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

She goes to the Chicago Recovery Alliance\u2019s (CRA) building in North Lawndale to pick up boxes of Naloxone and hundreds of clean needles for herself and other heroin injectors in Orland Park.<\/p>\n

The CRA was founded in 1992 by Dan Biggs to test for STDs and distribute clean needles and contraceptives. Since 1996, before it was expressly legal, they began to distribute Naloxone to anyone who wanted it, free of charge.<\/p>\n

Biggs said he thinks police might be challenged by the idea of saving lives, and may consider that to be the work of paramedics.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the side of the police car it says to serve and protect, and you know, to me the height of service and protection is reviving someone from a lethal overdose,\u201c said Biggs.<\/p>\n

John Gutenson has worked at the CRA since 2001, shortly after his stepson died of a heroin overdose, and a few years after he kicked his own heroin addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a lot of people die that were better human beings than me from an overdose and HIV. I\u2019m no ******* great specimen of a human. I\u2019m trying to balance the scales by saving humans,\u201d said Gutenson.<\/p>\n

The CRA receives grant money distribute Naloxone and train people how to use it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just a way of keeping people alive long enough to figure things out,\u201d said Gutenson.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: John Gutenson sits in the Lawndale office of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, waiting for people to come by and pick up naloxone and clean needles. (Jack Adams\/MEDILL) <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Adams Cook County Police Chief John Roberts\u2019 son died of a heroin overdose in 2009, and ever since then he\u2019s been saving other heroin addicts from the same fate. \u201cAll my life I\u2019ve been trained to first and foremost save lives,\u201d said Roberts. After his son\u2019s death, Roberts said he went through a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":24331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[675],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-justice"],"yoast_head":"\nChicago Police still don't have overdose reversing Naloxone - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chicago-police-still-dont-have-overdose-reversing-naloxone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chicago Police still don't have overdose reversing Naloxone - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Jack Adams Cook County Police Chief John Roberts\u2019 son died of a heroin overdose in 2009, and ever since then he\u2019s been saving other heroin addicts from the same fate. \u201cAll my life I\u2019ve been trained to first and foremost save lives,\u201d said Roberts. 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