NY Daily News: Opioid overdoses killing New Yorkers at record pace

Heroin needles in their arms. Prescription painkillers swallowed or crushed and snorted. And gel scraped from fentanyl patches eaten by abusers.

These are the ways a record number of New Yorkers — about 1,300 people — fatally overdosed last year. That’s more than twice the number of people who were murdered or killed in car wrecks — combined.

Officials attributed about 80% of the overdoses to opioids; out of those, 90% were caused by heroin or fentanyl, a powerful synthetic drug.

I could recount to you story after story that would literally chill you,” Dermot Shea, the NYPD’s chief of crime control strategies, said Thursday. “Pregnant women overdosing. A couple, one is saved and an hour later we’re responding back to the same apartment for the other.”

The overall number of overdoses jumped about 39% last year from the year before. And the number of overdoses has more than doubled from two decades ago, prompting some health officials and cops to compare the opioid crisis to the crack epidemic of the ’80s and early ’90s.

The problem has gotten so bad, the NYPD has begun tracking opioid overdoses in “real time.” Every overdose report — from heroin or pain killers — is tracked in a system called RxStat — similar to the NYPD crime-tracking system CompStat — to identify “hot spots.”

While 1,300 people fatally overdosed in the city last year, 334 people were murdered and 225 died in car wrecks.

Between 2011 and 2015, heroin sales arrests in the city increased by 57%.

NY Daily News: Nine people overdose in 24-hour span amid New York City’s opioid epidemic

Nine people suffered overdoses across the city in a 24-hour period from Wednesday to Thursday — one of them in a bathroom at Macy’s in Herald Square.

The cluster of overdoses — four died and five survived — underscores the pervasiveness of the city’s opioid epidemic. In two of the cases, paramedics successfully administrated Narcan, a drug that reverses the effects of opioids, including pain killers and heroin.

It’s good to see yeoman reporting and transparency and information coming from the NYPD, although if these were released earlier it would have interfered with a temporary self-celebratory photo exhibition and monthly press releases and comparative stats from ye bad old days of yore in the 80’s and early 90’s when crack cocaine was the scourge.

Speaking of crack, a diluted cheap free base version of cocaine, a lot of the smack distributed to customers were mixed with the synthetic but still deadly fentanyl.

I guess this unfortunate expose had to see daylight after the recent busts of a wretched violent drug consortium based in Queens and a massive Medicaid and Medicare embezzlement and drug dealing conspiracy led by a physician and a former assemblyman from Brooklyn and a spate of overdoses in cop centric Staten Island.

Credit undoubtedly goes to the solid police work to busting these ravenous bastards, but there is obviously a lot more outlets out there, and now they will be operating further underground and more stealth, but one can’t help wonder if this scourge exacerbated with the ubiquitous presence of Rite Aids, CVS’s, Walgreen’s and Duane Reades all over the 5 boroughs, with some that are literally on the same intersection on every corner.

So the tally of crime related deaths, and last time I checked, trafficking, selling, possessing and using heroin, a schedule 1 drug in company with the glorious kush, the sticky icky and medically beneficial marijuana, is a crime. And this crime  So with 1350 fatalities, an increase of 900 a year before, the total crime related deaths last year was 1,684 including murders.

Not very pretty at all.

Also not pretty and bordering on retarded was a cop’s urge to channel the spirit of Jack Palance and quoting Metallica’s song about the death penalty to ward off some trouble making kids near a high school in Midwood, Brooklyn:

What was this cop, still not identified a week later, so let’s call him Officer Twat, trying to accomplish here besides trying to provoke a confrontation no different than some gangbanger or the legendary outlaws I previously referred to. Especially Jack Palance in Shane:

Sometimes, with stupid shit being demonstrated like this, it makes you wonder if the ones given the responsibility to serve and protect the public from criminals are just itching to utilize the weapons they were assigned any chance they get, well, because they are there and it’s just a waste not using them like that. Like Figurehead Trump’s observation about our nuclear stockpile. It is really like the NYPD is trying to get sued. Like it hasn’t cost the taxpayers enough already.

Then there is this shit going on in Greenpoint, Brooklyn over a parking space, which is as much a rarity and as endangered as the polar bears in the arctic and a impenetrable defense from the Knicks. Apparently, the city saw quite a money largesse generator here.

New York Shitty

If you happen to own a motor vehicle and find yourself needing to park it in Greenpoint listen up, you will undoubtedly find what I am about to relay of the utmost interest.

See the highlighted area above? The one which seems to be demarcated as a legally permissible parking space if one consults the lines drawn on the street? Well, it is most decidedly not legal and has become quite the revenue mill for our traffic enforcement officials. I have seen (and in one case, photographed) “meter maids” loitering nearby— in one case, for nearly twenty minutes— waiting for someone to park in this space so he or she can issue the motorist a ticket.

Before I proceed I would like to make it known why this space is illegal. Some time ago there was work conducted on the street proper. It was by Con Ed, I believe. This required moving the bus stop for the B43 and B62 approximately fifteen feet to the north (or, referencing the above photo, to the right). Given buses need a wide berth of passage this change is quite understandable and indeed necessary. The question still arises as to why the lines on the street were not changed, but we’ll table that matter.

I know what you’re thinking:

Okay, so the bus stop was moved? What’s the big deal here?

Well this is where it gets interesting, gentle readers. You see this bus stop has since been moved yet again. This time to the south. It is presently located roughly in front of our local C-Town: 953 Manhattan Avenue

What I can tell you— because I have seen it with my own eyes and filmed it— is “traffic” has stepped up their game regarding the enforcement of this illegal parking space. They are no longer simply issuing tickets. They have started towing the vehicles outright. And, as of this morning, they are breaking into said misplaced vehicles if need be in order to tow them. Don’t take my word for it, watch for yourself. Seeing is truly believing.

Given the NYPD, and specifically the 94th Precinct, have had a spate of bad publicity lately (I am being very kind here), one would presume, hope, they would be endeavoring to foster better “community relations”. However, stuff like this (enforcing an illegal parking space whose reason for being illegal in the first place is no longer extant) does the exact opposite. Want to (further) erode the respect and trust of the community one serves? This here example is a sterling way to do it.

And the insightful cherry on top of this arbitrary abuse of authority

Some can make the argument that the police are merely doing their job. This is a very short-sighted stance to take. The reality is the police cannot be everywhere and enforce every law all the time. They have to prioritize and enforcing this space (as illegal parking) has been made a priority. I want each and every one of you to think about this. I want you to ask yourselves why this is so (because I just spelled it out for you). Ca-CHING!

Indeed, The NYS also lays down the horrendous expenses for having the misfortune of doing the felonious deed of assuming the right to park in an ample space for a few hours or in front of your living space.

Heinous.

This is something to think about when it comes to other deployments to threats to living in a society, real or perceived. Like walking through a park at night in your own neighborhood or riding a bike cautiously crossing against the red with no one around (the Idaho stop), or even riding a bike around an obstruction as an illegally parked vehicle, building development or even a police car. Or even just conversing with friends on a sidewalk or stoop.

Despite all that, everything is just fine in the greatest city in the world. Except all that depressing heroin usage. Because of this, most of our cops now have to be babysitters for these junkies with naxolone at the ready, which will probably have to take over the space on their belts for those assigned with tasers. At least they will have a reason to use the naxolone though. And it’s reassuring they didn’t use the tasers as defibrillator substitution when naxolone or narcan wasn’t available. So we taxpayers dodged an expensive class action suit right there.