WESTFIELD – The head of the police Community Service Unit said that the number of opioid overdoses in Westfield has seen a marked decrease over the last month in comparison to the first weeks of 2022.

Westfield Police Lt. Eric Hall said last week that the city has gone nearly a month without a reported accidental opioid overdose. The lack of overdoses was so noteworthy, Hall said, that the professionals on the Drug Addiction and Recovery Team had wondered if the police had simply stopped reporting overdoses that were taking place.

The streak of no overdoses in the city coincides with the decline of the omicron wave of the pandemic, but Hall said that it can be hard to tell whether they are related.

“I don’t know if it is a direct correlation of the pandemic, or if maybe DART (Drug Addiction Recovery Team) is actually having an effect,” said Hall, “It is hard to put your finger on one thing.”

The streak did end when Westfield police responded to three overdose calls in two days last week, but Hall was optimistic that overdose incidents could be declining overall.

The Community Service Unit and DART take a relatively new approach to drug use within the city that puts a focus on harm reduction and actual rehabilitation, instead of punishment. Part of the strategy has involved the use of two mental health professionals from the Behavioral Health Network who have been working with Westfield police and responding alongside them to certain calls where their intervention is likely to be more effective than attempts by police officers.

Hall said that the mental health workers have been an asset to the police since they were implemented last year, and have helped take the burden of responding to a mental health crisis away from people who weren’t necessarily trained in how to handle them, and who don’t have all of the same legal tools.

“Police are asked to wear a lot of hats,” said Hall. “We can identify a mental health issue, but we have few options and can’t do a formal evaluation. The clinicians have more options.”

Though Hall is hopeful that harm-reduction tactics can continue to be effective, the danger to some opioid users in general has increased. Street heroin has for a long time now known to be often laced with fentanyl, a much more powerful drug that has been blamed for countless overdose deaths.

Fentanyl is considered to be powerful enough that an amount that could fit on the tip of one’s finger could be fatal to the average person. As time went on, tolerances went up, and Hall said that when the police confiscate bags of heroin, they often find them to contain more fentanyl than heroin.

“People build up a tolerance, and then they always look for the next, stronger high,” said Hall of the phenomenon.