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Five men, all believed to be in their 20s, lay unconscious on a park bench for hours before receiving help
Author of the article:
Scott Brown
Release date :
Jun 28, 2021 1 hour 3 minutes read 23 comments Five young men were rushed to hospital after overdosing on a park bench in English Bay on Sunday morning. Photo by Francis Georgian / PNG Content of the article
The Vancouver Police Department is under fire for its response to a group overdose in English Bay on Sunday morning.
For at least three hours, five men in their twenties sat sprawled together, unconscious, on a park bench on Beach Avenue. Today, four of them are in serious condition in hospital.
Those who passed them and there would have been hundreds, if not thousands, on a sunny day in the busy neighborhood, may have thought the men were resting in the shade or sleeping with an early drink. the morning.
David Johnson was enjoying a cup of coffee along the sea wall around 7:30 a.m. Sunday when he saw a policeman approach the unconscious men on the bench.
I didn’t see him check vital signs or talk on the radio and then he left, he said.
Johnson said he then showed a photo of the five men he took to two other VPD officers, a man and a woman, whom he met on nearby Denman Street, but neither expressed a lot of worry.
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She looked at him and chuckled, as the man walked away. They didn’t do anything either, Johnson said. What training do they have? You think they would be worried and go there to check it out.
Passers-by thought they had only been drinking, so no one was alarmed, Vancouver Police spokesman Sgt. Steve Addison said Sunday.
Addison said the two officers who checked out the five men earlier in the morning believed they were just sleeping.
They were snoring, there was no obvious drug paraphernalia and they did not appear to be in medical distress at the time, he said.
At 10:30 a.m., Addison says that a patrol officer was reported by a citizen concerned about the group’s well-being.
The VPD officer checked the men and found they were overdosing, with shallow breathing or no breathing, so he began first aid, Addison said. Other police officers soon arrived and administered naloxone, which began to bring some of the men to consciousness.
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Naloxone is a drug that can reverse life-threatening breathing problems caused by opioid overdoses.
Sarah Morris, spokesperson for British Columbia’s Emergency Health Services, said six paramedics had been dispatched and four of the five men had been taken to hospital. Morris said the four were in serious, but stable, condition.
Postmedia also obtained a photo which was taken before 7:38 a.m. about three hours before the group received medical treatment and which shows two officers in uniform looking at the five men.
In the photo, the faces of two of the men, each dressed in tracksuits and wearing sneakers, are visible and both have their eyes closed. The faces of the other three men are obscured by the standing officers.
A second submitted photo, taken at 8 a.m., shows officers no longer at the scene but the men still collapsed on the bench with their heads resting on each other. A two-liter soda bottle and a discarded medical mask lay at their feet.
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Postmedia chose not to post the photos to respect men’s privacy.
Health crisis in its fifth year
British Columbia declared a public health emergency in 2016 in response to an alarming number of illicit drug overdoses. Over the next five years, more than 7,000 British Columbians died from overdoses of illicit drugs.
In the first four months of 2021, there had been 680 presumed deaths in British Columbia and the province is on the verge of breaking last year’s grim record of 1,726 drug-related deaths.
The BC Coroners Service says fentanyl, the synthetic opioid fueling the crisis, was detected in 86% of deaths this year and last year.
Twitter.com/browniescott
Correction: British Columbia Emergency Health Services said Monday that four of the five men had been taken to hospital. Police initially said the five had been hospitalized.
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