SPOKANE, Wash — It's hard to know the true toll of Spokane's drug problem, but Spokane Police Lieutenant Terry Preuninger says the trend so far this year is troubling.
"Just over 30 mentions of the word 'Narcan' in police reports covering about a nine day period," he said, after pulling police reports Thursday.
It's far from a scientific analysis. Preuninger checked reports for words like "Narcan" and also double-checked calls for police response that later turned out to be overdoses.
"It does seem like there's been a little bit of an increase just in the last few weeks," he said.
For SPD, tracking overdoses is difficult.
For starters, it's not a crime.
"We don't have a crime code for it, it's not entered into our criminal data," Lt. Preuninger said. "I know that on social media and other sources, it appears a lot more overdoses have been reported, there have been a couple of fatalities. They're death investigations, but we can't say they're overdoses because we still have a lot of information still to come back from the medical examiners office."
KREM 2's request for overdose death data from the medical examiner's office wasn't answered Thursday.
Preuninger said even if an officer or a citizen uses Narcan in an overdose it may not be tracked, further complicating the ability to calculate full overdose numbers.
Far more often, overdoses require an EMS response.
Spokane Fire Department information officer Justin de Ruyter says data shows a 'consistent and significant rise in OD calls' since 2022.
That year, SFD responded to 1,195 overdose calls, an average of three a day. By 2023, that number ticked up to 1,600 overdose calls, averaging four a day. In 2022, EMS gave Narcan to 499 patients; the next year, 669 patients got Narcan.
In the first 38 days of 2024 alone, SFD has responded to 249 overdose calls -- an average of six every day.
Actual overdoses are likely higher, de Ruyter said, since some come in as cardiac arrest calls.
"It is very hard to track," Lt. Preuninger said of overdoses.
One issue is the lack of a centralized source for data between police, fire, the medical examiner and hospitals.
"There's not, that I know of, any kind of repository where all four of those groups are placing that information into a single space," Preuninger said.
Another unknown, at least for now, is what's causing the apparent rise in overdoses. Lt. Preuninger says it's too early to know if it can be linked to a single drug or even a new version of Spokane's current problem substance.
"Fentanyl is the number one problem we have," he said. "It is, bar none, outweighing all the other substances combined."
According to the most recent numbers on Spokane County Regional Health's online dashboard, 215 people died of drug overdoses in 2022, with 73% attributed to opioids.
A request for more overdose data from SRHD, including 2023 numbers, was not answered Thursday.
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