New Suffolk Police Opiate Addiction Outreach Program 'Mourns Death, But Honors Life'

PATCHOGUE, NY — After Carole Trottere organized a drug overdose awareness event last October, in which she offered free pizza along with training in the administration of the opiate antidote, Narcan, in memory of her lost son, Alex, she still really needed to get over the event.

Though she was open to it, future events were not yet on the horizon.

Over the last months, her activism has evolved, though slowly.

In May on Opioid Awareness Day, she partnered with fellow parents who lost children to opiate overdoses or fentanyl poisonings and offered memorial rocks — the brainchild of Suffolk Legis. Kara Hahn — at an informational station for other parents at the Port Jefferson Farmer’s Market.

Alongside the group, Suffolk police trained almost 100 people, who had been walking around in the market, to administer Narcan, surprisingly as there was not much advertising for the event.
“One of the vendors came over and said he'd lost someone,” she said. “It's amazing how many people came over and decorated a rock.”

Trottere and the other parents would talk to visitors to the station, she recalled.

“It was just a really great experience for everyone,” she said.

In a unique partnership, the two entities have banded together as part of a new outreach program to give grieving parents, who have lost a child, or others who have lost someone in their life, an opportunity to honor and remember that person’s life.

They are expanding to more markets with hopes of taking part in fairs and festivals where the program comes to people in more convenient settings.

“I like the fact that the police are very concerned,” Trottere said. “They’re not just sitting in a silo.”

The department is looking beyond making drug arrests and monotonously cranking out Narcan trainings here and there.

There is some thought to the process.

“They're looking at the bigger picture and how they can bring all these grieving parents into it also and maybe help them as well,” she said. “So, I think it's a good partnership.”

The police department’s involvement in the outreach program stems from its Behavioral Health Unit, which identifies people with mental health issues or drug addiction and makes sure they get the services they need, as well as Narcan training, which is administered through the police academy, Deputy Police Commissioner Risco Mention-Lewis said.

“I've always thought about this idea of ‘we have to mourn the death,’ but it's much more important that we get to honoring the life,” she said. “And so through this vision, I'm hoping that between behavioral health and the Narcan training, we can honor the life along with the parents who have lost children, to maybe save some lives. By honoring the lives lost, hopefully, we will save the lives of others.”

In 2021, there were 431 deaths, followed by 394 in 2022, according to Mention-Lewis, who noted the numbers for 2022 are not complete due to the cyberattack last September.

“We're talking 400 lives and that's the most important thing,” she said, adding that the people are no longer alive because of opiate addiction.

As part of the rollout, the outreach program will be available at two upcoming farmer’s markets in Patchogue and Stony Brook, where the tables have been donated to help with the cause.

The police will conduct the trainings next to a station with Memorial rocks painted in purple, which can be decorated with a name or a photo as a way of healing for parents and other loved ones.

The parents are hoping to give comfort to other parents who have lost a child and give them an opportunity to create something with their child’s name on it.

The rocks are then placed around parks and other locations as a reminder of how many Long Islanders have died from overdose and fentanyl poisonings.

To Trottere and the group, it’s a way of recognizing the person who died was once here.

“The deaths are pretty steady,” Risco-Mention Lewis said. “However, the saves are a lot more because of Narcan. So, the more lives you save in that moment, the more possible you don't know how many lives you've saved because we're doing more saves – people in homes that we never will know about.”

People are saving lives with Narcan on street corners.

There are sometimes multiple saves on one person, and the more saves there are means it’s more likely the person will overcome their addiction and make it through to the other side.

It’s not only Narcan that is important.

The department has also been following up with resources for people who overdose.

More recently, Mention-Lewis saw the policy in place when she was in a local hospital with her daughter. Dressed in her civies, the deputy commissioner observed an officer speaking with a man who was under the influence, and then providing him with a brochure with helpful resources about getting help.

She’s hoping that the partnership will take off by providing an opportunity to parents to honor their child.

The venue doesn’t matter.

“Whatever your child loved … let's see if we can work with the place your child frequented in happier times and see can we do a Narcan training there because they seem to be much more effective than us having forums,” she said.

Officer Bridget Topping, who works with Suffolk’s Behavioral Health Unit, said Trottere reached out last year before her first venture at Stony Brook Pizza to see how the department could be involved, explaining that she wanted something very low-key without uniforms.

“She didn't want it to be about recruitment,” Topping said. “She didn't want it to be about anything except that we're in a crisis. This is real. This is happening and it can touch anybody, of course, all socioeconomic classes like it wasn't discriminatory in any way whatsoever.”

Topping had the idea of enlisting the department’s Emergency Medical Services trainer, Jason Byron, at the police academy because he gives Narcan presentations across the county.

Topping questioned whether the smaller, more intimate venue might work, and Byron decided to give it a whirl, she said.

“It was just so wildly successful and he really enjoyed the intimacy of having one-on-one conversations with people as opposed to just doing a large presentation,” Topping said. “So it was just something that we at the end of that day, you were like, ‘This was amazing. How can we make this work? How can we do more of these?’”

After that the department was involved in one with the bereavement group, Beading Hearts.
Byron said he has been shocked at how well the smaller setting has worked as opposed to larger venues like libraries and schools.

“I call it Narcan in the most intimate setting,” he said. “People walk in, they give us about five to 10 minutes of their time.”

Byron walks through the training “as long as they want us to, and by the end of that little tiny talk or training – I wouldn't even call it a training – they get all the information that you get and they get to be in that setting.”

“I think they're actually getting more than a regular generic class in an auditorium with 200 or 300 people,” he said. “They get all their questions answered, and they leave there with a Narcan kit, which is the best thing because that's what's gonna save somebody's life.”

Narcan is something that everyone should have on hand, according to Mention-Lewis.

A big problem law enforcement is seeing now is that many street drugs are laced with opiates and fentanyl, she said.

“You never know where it might show up,” she said. “It's like anything you want to be prepared. You don't want to wait until stuff happens and wish you were prepared.”

“It's like having a child and not knowing CPR,” she said. “Yeah, you want to be prepared. You probably will never use it, but you want to be prepared."

Here's Where You Can Find Narcan Training and Memorial Rock Tables This Summer:

• The Patchogue Farmers Market on Aug. 6 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The market is located at the Long Island Rail Road train station parking lot at North Ocean Avenue and Division Street in Patchogue.
• The Three Village Farmers Market on Aug. 25 from to 3 to 7 p.m. The market is located at 1099 North Country Road in Stony Brook.

Important To Know:

• For more information about the memorial rocks and “Rock the Island,” contact Carole Trottere at [email protected].
• If you have lost a loved one to overdose or fentanyl poisoning, and you would like to incorporate a Narcan training into a memorial event for your child, or loved one, please contact Officer Bridget Topping at [email protected].
• Anyone in need of Narcan training can also reach out to to the Suffolk Police Academy at 631-853-7051.