It's early into 2017 and LaPorte Police have already responded to incidents in which a person overdosed on opiates, or was thought to have experienced a drug overdose. LaPorte Police Department Captain Thomas Thate, who is the Chief Detective of the Detective Bureau says the department had it's first-of-the-year Narcan deployment on January 28th. Narcan is the antidote used for the treatment of an opiate emergency, such as an overdose. The victim Thate says was a white male in his late thirties. An ambulance responded and the emergency crew determined he had possibly overdosed on an opiate-based narcotic. Thate says there was a second incident on January 31st in which a white male in his late twenties appeared to be passed out on the pavement of a parking lot in the 100 block of East Lincolnway. Thate says in that incident, the Narcan deployment was not a life-saving issue because the second man didn't have opiates in his system. His life was saved because he was found in-time and taken to the hospital. Nobody was arrested in either incident. LaPorte Police and Fire started carrying Narcan to use in opiate overdose emergencies around November of 2015.
