Knowledge, preparedness, and compassion fatigue among law enforcement officers who respond to opioid overdose

Carroll, Jennifer; Mital, Sasha; Wolff, Jessica; Noonan, Rita K.; Martínez, Pedro Daniel; Podolsky, Melissa C.; Killorin, John C.; Green, Traci C.

doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2020.108257

Cited by 34 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Another approach involves reshaping police officers’ knowledge, attitudes and beliefs [ 16 ]. Educating police has proven critical to the success of local syringe service programs [ 5 , 53 , 59 ] and Good Samaritan laws [ 9 ]. However, some studies found that evidence-based training can exacerbate younger officers’ negative attitudes towards PWUD [ 62 ] and harm reduction training for police should account for gender differences in behavior; male officers were found to be more likely to confiscate syringes from PWUD than female officers [ 37 , 46 , 50 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior

et al. 2021

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Background Policing shapes the health risks of people who use drugs (PWUD), but little is understood about interventions that can align officer practices with PWUD health. This study deploys the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand what influences police intentions to make discretionary referrals to treatment and harm reduction resources rather than arrest on less serious charges. Methods On-line surveys integrating TPB constructs and adapting an instrument measuring police intentions to make mental health treatment referrals were completed by police employees in Indiana, Massachusetts, and Missouri. They also included items about stigma towards PWUD and attitudes and beliefs about opioid addiction, treatment, and recovery. Findings Across the sites, 259 respondents perceived control over their decision to arrest for misdemeanors (69%) and confiscate items such as syringes (56%). Beliefs about others’ approval of referrals to treatment, its ability to reduce future arrests, and to increase trust in police were associated with stated practices of nonarrest for drug and possession and making referrals (p ≤ .001), and nonarrest for syringe possession (p ≤ .05). Stigma a towards PWUD was negatively associated with stated practices of nonarrest (p ≤ .05). Respondents identified supervisors as having the most influence over use of discretion, seriousness of the offense as the most influential value, and attitude of the suspect as the most important situational factor. The 17 Likert scale items analyzed had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.81. Conclusion The TPB offers untapped potential to better understand and modify police practices. In designing interventions to improve the health outcomes of police encounters with PWUD, further research should validate instruments that measure the relationship between these variables and discretionary intentions, and that measure role-relevant police stigma towards PWUD.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior

et al. 2021

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“…Overtime, through numerous planning meetings, emails, phone calls, and visits to the hotel bar between conference sessions with various ORS collaborators, I became familiar with some of the many strategies law enforcement professionals can engage to produce knowledge of and continuously validate their epistemic authority over the illicit drug market. Hardly systematic, my insights about the cultures, strategies, and discourses of law enforcement institutions emerged organically though the repetitive motions of my professional duties as a public health consultant: explaining public health to law enforcement; explaining law enforcement to public health; and explaining my research about law enforcement (Carroll, Mital, et al, 2020) back to law enforcement to facilitate meaningful public health partnerships. I refined my understanding of my interlocutors’ conceptual schemas and modeled worlds every step of the way.…”

Section: Methods and Messmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auras of Detection: Power and Knowledge in Drug Prohibition

Carroll

2021

Contemporary Drug Problems

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Drug checking is an evidence-based strategy for overdose prevention that continues to operate (where it operates) in a legal “gray zone” due to the legal classification of some drug checking tools as drug paraphernalia—the purview of law enforcement, not public health. This article takes the emergence of fentanyl in the U.S. drug supply as a starting point for examining two closely related questions about drug checking and drug market expertise. First, how is the epistemic authority of law enforcement over the material realities of the drug market produced? Second, in the context of that authority, what are the socio-political implications of technologically advanced drug checking instruments in the hands of people who use drugs? The expertise that people who use drugs maintain about the nature of illicit drug market and how to navigate the illicit drug supply has long been discounted as untrustworthy, irrational, or otherwise invalid. Yet, increased access to drug checking tools has the potential to afford the knowledge produced by people who use drugs a technological validity it has never before enjoyed. In this article, I engage with theories of knowledge production and ontological standpoint from the field of science, technology, and society studies to examine how law enforcement produces and maintains epistemic authority over the illicit drug market and to explore how drug checking technologies enable new forms of knowledge production. I argue that drug checking be viewed as a form of social resistance against law enforcement’s epistemological authority and as a refuge against the harms produced by drug criminalization.

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“…Indeed, one recent study found that in a national sample of police officers who respond to overdose, more than one-third (36%) reported making an arrest at an overdose scene (11), suggesting that enforcement does occur during overdose response. The potential for arrest at overdose scenes and subsequent druginduced homicide prosecutions remains an important consideration for health officials as reliance on police as overdose first responders becomes standard in many jurisdictions through police equipment with naloxone.…”

Section: An Important Distinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%