Having been pushed by families who lost their loved ones to drugs, Chicago Police are now getting trained to investigate drug-related deaths as homicides.
As CBS 2's Marissa Perlman reported Thursday night, two former CPD officers helped inspire that change. The former officers – Terry Almanza and John Roberts – are among the hundreds of parents in the Chicago area whose kids have died from a lethal dose of drugs.Almanza's daughter, Sydney, died after an overdose at a party in 2015.Roberts' son, Billy, died of a heroin overdose in 2009.
Since Almanza's daughter's death in 2015, there have been more than 6,000 opioid-related deaths in Chicago alone.But it is believed the number of convictions that brought homicide charges against the sellers is in the single digits. They know putting a drug dealer behind bars won't bring their own kids back, but Almanza and Roberts both say it could save other lives.
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