The Plano Police Department’s Chief Ed Drain visited the Plano City Jail last week to thank detention officers who had saved a man in the midst of a drug overdose last December.
According to a Facebook post from the Plano Police Department, the department’s Narcotics Unit arrested a man on December 7, 2021 and brought him to jail on narcotics charges.
While the suspect was being processed, he became unresponsive. The detention staff noted that he showed signs of having ingested narcotics and could be suffering from an overdose.
According to Plano Police, the detention officers worked together as a team to immediately administer him Narcan, a drug used to counter the effects of opioid overdose.
According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, Narcan, medically known as naloxone hydrochloride, temporarily reverses the effects of an overdose from opioids by attaching to opioid receptors in the brain.
As stated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, administering the drug does not require any medical training, but the drug can reverse the effects of opioid overdose in just a few minutes.
Narcan itself does not contain opioids and cannot cause an overdose.
Per The Dallas Morning News, several North Texas police department officers have Narcan on hand.
The Garland Police Department acquired 300 doses of Narcan in May 2021.
Following the purchase, Lt. Pedro Barineau said every Garland officer operating in a uniformed enforcement capacity would be issued doses of the medication for use in case they encounter someone who has overdosed on opioids.
Officers had to administer a second dose of Narcan to the suspect before he recovered. The detention team kept the man stabilized until the arrival of Plano Fire-Rescue paramedics, who transported him to a local hospital.
