Fed chair discusses Naloxone on Newsnight

13 May 2021

The chair of West Midlands Police Federation has spoken of his concerns over officers carrying a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose.

Jon Nott says he supports members who choose to carry Naloxone but he’s worried about members being subjected to lengthy and stressful investigations if an addict still dies after being given the medication which blocks the effects of opioids such as heroin.

He was speaking on the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs programme Newsnight during a feature on the Force’s trial of Naloxone.

“Our concerns are they’d all be treated as a police contact death and therefore, rightly so, there has to be an investigation into that,” he said.

“Those can be lengthy investigations and so you’ve got the individual officer who is trying to deal with the fact they’ve not been able to save somebody’s life compounded on top of a lengthy investigation into any possible wrong-doing when all they’ve tried to do is save somebody’s life.”

Newsnight was with officers in Walsall for the first training session of officers with Naloxone. It’s the latest stage of a pilot, which has already seen officers in Birmingham voluntarily carrying the opiate reversal drug.

West Midlands Police was the first Force to start trialling officers carrying the use of Naloxone, which is carried in a nasal spray form. It’s now being piloted by officers in Cambridgeshire, North Wales and Scotland.

The Federation nationally has said police officers shouldn’t be turned into paramedics and that the ambulance service is best to respond to overdoses.

And Jon said there was a safety issue for officers too.

“When we’ve administered the drug and the individual comes around, they can sometimes be unpredictable,” he said, adding they can “lash out because they’re not aware or they’re a bit delirious.”

The Newsnight feature is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer. It starts 31 minutes and 16 seconds into the programme.

BBC News has also covered the story: Police expand use of overdose life-saver drug Naloxone