Agreement on overdose information sharing is necessary, sensible [Editorial]

The agreement, which is in effect for five years and is their first of its kind in Maryland, closes a reporting hole in the Sheriff's Office's nearly two-year effort to respond to and record every heroin/opioid-related overdose in the county, non-fatal and fatal, as a means of gathering intelligence about drug dealers and supply sources.

While Harford County Task Force detectives have been able to respond to overdose calls that come through the county-run 911 emergency system, overdose victims who go to or are taken directly by family or others to the county's urgent care centers or to either of its two hospitals, would not have been part of the sheriff's data collection prior to the signing of last week's agreement.

"We can't fix a problem if we don't know what the entire problem is," Gahler said about the need for the additional reporting.

We agree. Contemporary policing is and should be data driven, regardless if some purists believe the contrary. If Gahler hadn't started the current overdose response protocol, we doubt our county's citizens would have comprehended the scope of the heroin epidemic and how it touches everyone in the community. The reporting protocol has helped galvanize awareness programs and to point out the increased need for local addiction treatment programs.

Will these additional statistics make a difference by getting illegal drugs off the street? At a community forum the night the information sharing agreement was signed, the commander of the task force, Capt. Lee Dunbar, observed "demand is huge, the supply is endless," while conceding the amount of heroin seized by law enforcement in Harford is only a fraction of what is available.

Still, anything the police can use in their arsenal to arrest the supply of heroin and other abused opioids is better than doing nothing and letting the deaths run their course.

"When the sheriff's department approached us about participating in this MOU, we said 'absolutely, yes,'" Lyle Sheldon, president and CEO of Upper Chesapeake Health, said. "We recognize the challenge this epidemic causes for us in our communities, in our hospitals, we want to be very, very supportive and help as a community try to tackle this approach in a very, very different way."