AG warns police against handling lethal drugs

Police agencies across the state are being warned against handling street drugs that could contain fentanyl, a highly potent opioid that has killed thousands of Ohioans in recent years.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said he worries a law officer may be the next to overdose and die from accidental exposure to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

DeWine issued two bulletins within the last week warning agencies. One alert was for a drug called carfentanil, used to sedate elephants and other large animals. It’s one of the strongest opioids known to authorities.

A man suspected of selling carfentanil as heroin was indicted this week in central Ohio on 20 counts, including murder, in connection with a July 10 death and nine other overdoses that happened within hours of one another.

“Police are coming into contact with new drugs they’ve never encountered before,” DeWine said. “We want people to be very, very careful with fentanyl handling, death can result.”

In 2014, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were involved in 502 overdose deaths in Ohio and 5,554 nationwide, according to Ohio Department of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

The state’s Criminal Intelligence Unit is urging law enforcement agencies to forego field testing of drugs, which increases the chances of exposure to drugs like carfentanil.

“It’s not worth the risks,” DeWine said.

Agencies are being counseled to collect drug evidence with extreme caution to keep from skin exposure and prevent inhalation.

Some fentanyl is so potent even a small amount absorbed through the skin or breathed in can cause death, said Chris Melink, resident agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Dayton office.

“Fentanyl and its analogs and derivatives are lethal in very low levels of exposure — milligram doses,” he said. “It can happen very rapidly.”

Dayton Police Lt. Col. Mark Ecton said agents in the past would test drugs in-field. Although no officers in the department have been harmed through in-field testing, the department decided to change its policy on July 19 to reflect the growing danger of powerful narcotics.

“Using information we received from various sources about new dangers of testing fentanyl, we’ve changed our policy,” Ecton said, citing the attorney general’s advisory as well as other law enforcement bulletins.

Now, officers are required to submit suspected drugs to the lab. Ecton said suspects are still charged as usual.

“They still must have probable cause to make an arrest,” he said.

Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said drug users are never sure what they’re buying and that unknown poses a similar risk to investigators.

“The drugs out there are killing these young people and they don’t know what they’re getting.,” Kelly said. “They could be buying an elephant tranquilizer, they could be buying a concoction of all kinds of chemicals. That’s what law enforcement is facing also.”

DeWine said there have been no reported cases in Ohio of officers accidentally overdosing while processing a crime scene. The DEA has released a video with a cautionary video of two Atlantic County, N.J. officers who experienced adverse health effects when exposed to fentanyl on the job.

Today’s officers are well trained to not inhale or make direct contact with drugs, Kelly said.

“They don’t do anything without putting on gloves. They take every precaution to not touch anything and certainly not to breathe anything,” he said. “There’s always the potential for some heat-of-the-moment thing or an accident. It’s another danger of the job.”

Kelly said his investigators don’t perform field tests. Drug evidence collected in Clark County is sent to the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) lab in London for testing. Already this year, BCI has issued more than 1,000 reports of fentanyl-related laboratory submissions.

Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer said his patrol officers already send the majority of narcotics to the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab for testing.

“I don’t know that there are many people doing that anymore,” Plummer said of field testing. “For the majority, patrol officers do not. The majority of the officers send it to the crime lab.”

Still, Plummer shared the concern about the increasingly-powerful narcotics and the exposure officers in-field can face.

“What we’re doing is having our drug units armed with Narcan in case they’re exposed to it,” Plummer said. “But it’s so powerful that there are concerns Narcan wouldn’t be able to treat this.”

Plummer noted, too, that care must be paid to drug-sniffing canine officers to ensure they are not harmed when finding drugs.

“Handlers need to be very careful they do not puncture the bag,” he said.

Butler County Sheriff’s Maj. Mike Craft said the department received the bulletins but have always had training about being careful when handling drugs, both for safety and evidence preservation.

“We haven’t had any incidents, other than being stuck with an occasional needle in a pocket or in a purse,” Craft said.

Hamilton Police Sgt. Brian Robinson said it’s important officers seek a well ventilated area when placing drugs into evidence.

“We encourage officers to carry latex gloves and use them when handling drugs to minimize exposure,” Robinson said. He added fentanyl is not always in a powder or crystal form, but can be in tablets and bricks made to look like heroin.

Kelly said the “Miami Vice” movie version of field testing a drug by tasting a dab on a finger is pure fiction.

“I’ve never ever in 43 years seen anybody ever do that,” Kelly said. “If a deputy did that that there would be serious repercussions.”

Staff Writer Lauren Pack and the Associated Press contributed to this story.

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