Robert Garrova covers criminal justice for the LAist and KPCC newsroom.
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily morning newsletter, How To LA. Every weekday, you'll get fresh, community-driven stories that catch you up with our independent local news.Los Angeles County has been administering naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, to people held in county jail much more often — a hundred or more times each year — than when it first started keeping track in 2020.
Because the department does not currently track how many overdose incidents occur in the jails each year, it’s difficult to get an accurate picture of how big the problem is .But data from the department on use of naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, show it has been administered increasingly over the last four years. It was given to people in county jail more than 230 times in 2022.
Tokar stressed that the jails were not immune to the nationwide issue of overdoses resulting from the proliferation of fentanyl.“The same way the community is seeing this — the overdoses and the unfortunate deaths from fentanyl — we’re seeing the same thing in the jails,” Tokar said. Tokar said the department's propensity to follow a"when in doubt, give that Narcan" philosophy is a big factor in the increased instances of using the medication inside the jails. Jail staffers, she explained, are urged to use it whenever they see signs of overdose.
“We know that there is a problem — a large problem — where we have illegal narcotics coming in, but as compared to last year, I can’t say there’s any difference,” Tokar said.Most law enforcement experts acknowledge that illicit drugs have been smuggled into jails — in a variety of jurisdictions — by visitors and staffers who carry them in. Drugs can also get into the facilities through mail.
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