Brandon del Pozo, PhD, MPA, MA
@BrandondelPozo
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Assistant professor at Brown conducting NIH-funded research on health, safety & justice. Former chief of police and NYPD precinct commander. NYC born & raised.
Joined August 2010
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Pinned Tweet
The Police and the State, out from
@CambridgeUP
, argues the police duty is to impartially protect, rescue, bring people & evidence to court, and regulate public behavior for fairness & cooperation. As a duty to citizens it demarcates the state from nature.
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This fell to my feet at Ground Zero on 9/11. There was a piece of tape on the back. It had been hanging in an office. I kept it to remind myself why our sacrifices were small in comparison to the losses people suffered. If you can find this family, I'd like to return it to them.
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🧵In Chicago, 4 young men stole a Kia and spent the night targeting women. They robbed three at gunpoint. Officer Areanah Preston was the fourth. She fought back. They shot her twice and took her gun. She laid there for 30 minutes, and died. They torched the Kia and went to bed.
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The children on this photo are now in their 30's, so after thinking through the privacy and dignity issues, I've decided to post an unredacted copy. Thanks to folks who helped talk this through.
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On 9/11, the man in this photo intended to go to the Risk Waters conference at Windows on the World at the top of 1WTC. Instead, he was sent to London on business the day before. Everyone at the conference perished. His office was on the 40th floor of 1WTC. This photo hung there.
This fell to my feet at Ground Zero on 9/11. There was a piece of tape on the back. It had been hanging in an office. I kept it to remind myself why our sacrifices were small in comparison to the losses people suffered. If you can find this family, I'd like to return it to them.
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1) Hire a man to clean your pool.
2) Hide behind your couch and unload 30 rounds of 5.56 from your AR-15 when he tries to clean your pool.
3) Don't charge the shooter because in Florida you can "stand your ground" against people who scare you.
4) America!
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He's retired, still married, and his three boys are now grown men who are healthy and thriving. In an email, he wrote "life has been good over the time since 9/11, which separates us from people no less deserving, just less lucky. Fate was kind: it wasn't my time to go."
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This is the story of the Risk Waters conference on 9/11, the terrible fate met by the people who were there, and the end of one of the most iconic restaurants in the world. The photo goes home tomorrow. Thank you, America, for your help. Be safe.
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This new Florida law makes it a crime for an officer to have a panic attack if he thinks there's fentanyl near you. Its threshold is literally that an officer receives medical care for symptoms related panicking about fentanyl; no proof of exposure needed.
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All suspects had numerous prior arrests for robbery, carjacking, auto theft and weapons possession, often while on probation for priors. There were no consequences for this violence so there was no reason for them to stop. And now Areanah Preston is dead.
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The 20th anniversary prompted me to go to my basement and look through some things from that day, like my journal entry from the night before (it was my birthday, and took stock of my life). I found the photo and realized it shouldn't be a souvenir, it should be returned.
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Thanks to the people retweeting. I was torn between allowing this photo to get swept up with the other debris, and keeping it as a reminder. Twenty years on, a family might appreciate getting it back, and the means for finding them are much better than back then.
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In December my colleagues and I published a paper that found young men in the most violent areas of Chicago would have been safer from violent death fighting in a heavily engaged infantry combat brigade at the height of the Iraq war than living at home. .
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Below is the timeline of events that night. Areanah was 24. She became a police officer to idealistically serve her city. She'd finished a master's degree at Loyola. Instead of walking for graduation this spring, her mother is going to accept the degree.
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🧵Our new study finds that when police seize illicit opioids to get them off the street and save lives, the **opposite** often happens: fatal overdoses increase over the next three weeks in the vicinity of the seizure. The link to the article is at the end of the thread.
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In 2016 I went out on patrol with Chicago police in the 11th District. Families driving by thanked us for being out there. The cops felt beleaguered and burned out. Policing can always be improved, but sometimes it feels like the only part of the system that's even functioning.
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The
@nytimes
asked me how a Seattle protest could go from peaceful to tear gas, pepper spray and stun grenades in 60 seconds. One cop makes a decision, and the rest double down. Too typical in policing. Watch it happen below.
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🧵NEW STUDY: Opening two safe injection sites in New York City DID NOT lead to increased crime or disorder, even though the NYPD stopped making most drug arrests around them. Read more in our paper, the first such published analysis, in
@JAMANetworkOpen
.
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We have a duty to disqualify Americans who foment insurrection against our democracy from running for elected office. All of them. It is written in plain English in our Constitution, the thing we point to as the sacred and inviolable basis of our freedom.
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Chicago's firearm violence led residents to call it "Chiraq." But do the risks of gun violence in US cities really compare to the risks of war? In a new
@JAMANetworkOpen
study, our team did the math. The answer: In some US cities, the risks are much worse.
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This is the article where physicians tell press and politicians that this is a bill based on a myth and they double down by writing it so all you need to charge a person is an officer seeking treatment because he believes nearby fentanyl caused his panic. .
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What's the point of naloxone, buprenorphine, a syringe exchange, no wait for treatment, not arresting for unprescribed addiction meds, putting treatment before arrests, & using a CompStat approach?
The City of Burlington saw a 50% decrease in opioid overdose deaths in 2018.
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This is Alaina Housely, one of 12 people killed in America's most recent mass shooting. I dare you to tell her parents what we really need are more private gunmen doing security everywhere: schools, churches, bars, nightclubs, synagogues. The killer shot the security guard first.
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Today on
@NPR
,
@RyanMarino
and I reassure police officers that the idea they can OD from being near fentanyl is a near impossibility, there has never been a confirmed case, and there's no need to subject their mental health to the anxiety the myth entails.
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Police & the public deserve better than to have lawmakers pander to them with a law that reinforces a proven myth about fentanyl exposure, one that will lead to more stress and panic, deliberately writing it so only a perception is needed for the charge.
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In 1968, as US troops massacred 347 civilians at My Lai, Hugh Thompson landed his helicopter between the US Army and the Vietnamese, ordered his soldiers to shoot any Americans who interfered, stopped the massacre, evacuated civilians, and reported it.
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A man carrying a concealed pistol—a retired Buffalo police officer—tried to intervene, his bullets were stopped by the attacker's body armor, and he was quickly killed. Universal concealed carry is the NRA's answer to mass shootings. There goes that idea.
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Just to be clear about the threshold, it is that an officer panicks at the thought that fentanyl is nearby, and somebody gives him narcan, which presents no indications it's been given for no reason, and doesn't prove there was exposure when the officer's panic symptoms subside.
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Kindergarten teacher Rita Curran was raped and murdered in 1971. She was 24. When I left Burlington, finding her killer was unfinished business. I'm so proud of the
@OneNorthAvenue
detectives who closed her case today. Thank you, all. The police never forgot about you, Rita.
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🚨🚨 POLICE, TAKE NOTE 🚨🚨
An emergency medicine pharmacist spilled fentanyl all over his forearm and ungloved hand, which had a cut. Nothing happened. He washed it off and went back to work. Fentanyl isn't police kryptonite.
@EMPoisonPharmD
@BenWWeston
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Military-aged males living in Chicago's most dangerous zip code faced a risk of firearm-related death over 3x the risk of combat death in Afghanistan, and nearly 4x the risks of Iraq. The death risks were also greater than combat for the 10% most violent zip codes in the city.
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When I was in a planning section at the NYPD, I drafted an active shooter response drill. These were the 10 steps, written for simplicity and speed.
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A West Virginia judge cut off treatment for a new mother recovering from addiction, saying "I always have a problem with people being on Suboxone to begin with, and that’s my position." Without meds, the woman soon relapsed. The court took away her child.
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@OrangeCoSheriff
@OCFireRescue
This was definitely not an instance of fentanyl exposure. Misinformation like this can be dangerous, and perpetuates false diagnoses, but training has been shown to be effective at reducing false beliefs on the part of officers. Please issue a correction.
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In this letter to the editor, my colleagues and I take
@NYTimesOpEd
writer Bret Stephens to task for his facile and ultimately incorrect portrayal of Portugal’s drug decriminalization policy, which by all the pertinent measures is a two-decade success story.
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The patrol uniform a police department chooses matters.
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From Seattle. Don't think for a moment police abolitionists don't want police. What they want is the power of the police for themselves, so they can police you, without having to account to you. Police abolitionists never miss an opportunity to be police.
POV: You're getting mobbed by antifa just for filming a protest
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If executing search warrants means needing to treat 11 officers for fentanyl exposure, we'd be finding drug dealers dead next to the big piles of fentanyl on their kitchen tables. Search warrants are dangerous, but not because of fentanyl. This was panic.
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In Philadelphia, military aged males living in the city's top 10% most violent zip codes also faced a risk of fatal firearm violence the same or greater than the risks faced by soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan; in some places the death risk was almost double that of war.
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Important: this study was made possible by the Indianapolis Metro Police Department, an innovative agency of thoughtful leaders open to scientific inquiry and sharing data. Thank you!
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Our team's new paper in the
@AJPH
finds that police drug enforcement is significantly, spatiotemporally associated with increases in opioid overdose death. We looked at two years of data, about 1,800 incidents, in Indianapolis.
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In all of the debate about drug decriminalization and public safety in the US, nobody has thought to ask Portuguese police officers what it's been like to police a decriminalized nation for over 20 years. This morning, we received IRB approval to... go to Portugal and ask them.
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A Maryland narcotics sergant tried to help his opioid-addicted daughter. The only methods available were abstinence-based. He even jailed her. She died of an OD ten days after release. All 50 states need to give addiction meds to prisoners. It saves lives.
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UPDATE:
Thanks for your help, everyone. Be safe.
On 9/11, the man in this photo intended to go to the Risk Waters conference at Windows on the World at the top of 1WTC. Instead, he was sent to London on business the day before. Everyone at the conference perished. His office was on the 40th floor of 1WTC. This photo hung there.
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Portugal has the population of New Jersey, which averages 3,000 fatal overdoses a year. It decriminalized drug possession, and averages 80. Police are a critical part of the effort. The difference in how they relate to people who use drugs is staggering.
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When a user's opioid supply is interrupted, their tolerance starts decreasing by some imprecise, unknown amount. Withdrawal sets in and risk aversion decreases.
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As a nation leading the world with 321 overdose deaths per million citizens, we scoff at a nation with fewer than 18 deaths per million for taking a decriminalized approach to individual drug possession that emphasizes universal, free access to treatment.
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Seventeen years ago today: 9/11/2001.
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When the man who stabbed an EMS lieutenant barricaded himself in his apartment in Queens yesterday, NYPD ESU responded with a Y-bar, a long tool to pin a person with a knife at a safe distance. De-escalation & apprehension is about physical tactics, not just communication skills.
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American police officers don't work for anyone. They work for everyone.
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Unknown tolerance, unknown potency, reduced risk aversion, and no margin of error in safely dosing fentanyl can all lead to the increased fatal overdose observed in our study.
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A police filming app that automatically livestreams footage to local police and three people of the user's choice is a good tool for transparency & accountability. No editing, all parties see it immediately, and can be used anonymously.
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This effect may be specific to fentanyl, and replications are under way, but this is the first localized quantitative evidence that police opioid seizures can cost lives, not necessarily save them. Link to the article here; DM if you don't have access.
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🧵In 2021 economists published a study that concluded each new strip club that opened in NYC reduced sex crimes in its police precinct by 13% within a week. If you are incredulous, you are correct. This was nonsense. Our formal reply is now in print here:
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@juliewiegandt
@ZachWritesStuff
@DCPoliceDept
We ceased making arrests for all unprescribed partial agonists over a year ago and the only noticeable change it coincided with was fatal overdoses declining 50%. There were no negative consequences.
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🚨NEW STUDY 🚨Unprescribed buprenorphine possession is a crime because people worry it contributes to overdose. Our team looked at 2,369 fatal opioid overdoses in Indiana over 7 years. Bupe was present in 2.3%, and usually with fentanyl, heroin, or meth.
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Boston has had just 2 homicides so far in 2024. Adjusting for population, that would be like Chicago having 8. But it's had 102. Homicides don't just befall cities, their governments can reduce them. It takes a comprehensive approach, and requires both public health and policing.
Few have noticed, but Boston has had almost no homicides in 2024, an extraordinary start to the year for a US city of 650,000 people.
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It was such an honor and a privilege to be our city's Chief of Police. I'm looking forward to future opportunities to serve, and happy and healthy times with my family.
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A president who calls for private gunmen at schools & houses of worship because his citizens have been attacked by enough mass murderers to conclude their government can't adequately protect them in public spaces is, by definition, running a failed state.
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When they get a replacement supply from a new source or batch, it will most certainly have fentanyl in it too, but its potency will be different and unknown, as this paper highlights.
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In 2018, as a police chief talking to scientists about what would save lives from overdose, I concluded that we needed to decriminalize diverted buprenorphine. It took years and many persistent hands, but that finally happened today in Vermont. Thank you, all. You'll save lives.
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There is zero percent chance this happened as reported. Keeping up the myth of fentanyl exposure is a profound disservice to hard working cops who trust people that spread this ridiculous falsehood, causing them to panic for no reason. Fentanyl isn't cop kryptonite. Please stop.
🚨 San Ramon
Update: multiple officers are being transported to a hospital and a Hazardous Materials Incident has been declared in the Safeway parking lot with additional resources responding.
Officers located and were exposed to Fentanyl during a search of the vehicle.
The…
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Officer Jason Rivera was killed at a domestic violence call last night. This is what he wrote in his application to
@NYPDnews
. It captures the essence of New York: a city of immigrants so proud to see their children serving as police. It has been like that from the beginning.
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Police of America: Fentanyl doesn't fly up your nose in a breeze and cause overdose. No alleged police overdose has ever been confirmed by a routine toxicology test. This case looks like the others, with symptoms of panic and anxiety. Be safe out there.
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New study: Our team found 10% of all 911 overdose responses in a large US city resulted in arrest, often for drug paraphernalia, and more often for stimulant overdoses, which are steadily on the rise.
@alexhkral
@BRaySociologist
@veruka2
@gwittervitter1
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A question for doctors who've testified in Montpelier against Vermont's bill to decriminalize buprenorphine possession: why is your standard of care for patients who get these medicines without a prescription to have them arrested & charged with a crime?
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We shouldn't accept press releases that an officer has, against all science and odds, overdosed on fentanyl by touching or breathing it, then when we ask for the lab results that prove it, be told medical information about officers is HIPAA protected.
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In a new study, scientists have found that taking unprescribed buprenorphine is associated with a lower risk of opioid overdose.
Also, water is wet.
Great research out of Ohio in
@ijdrugpolicy
. It's why
@SarahFairVT
,
@DA_LarryKrasner
& I legalized it.
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It was an ecological study, but the causal model makes sense, and has important policy implications. The next three tweets will lay it out.
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On one side you have Molotov Cocktail-throwing anarchists, and on the other you have far right radicals who love assault weapons and have vigilante fantasies. In the middle are beleaguered police that need reform, and residents suffering from a pandemic. What could go wrong?
#PDX
I'm back out in the Portland suburbs, where many hundreds are gathering for another pro-Trump caravan. People are still arriving, but I've already seen some Proud Boys, some Qanon proponents, and folks from the Three Percenters militia group.
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In
@nytopinion
, Bret Stephens warns us not to copy Portugal's drug policies, or we'll face its problems, too. If we followed them wholesale and got the same results, we'd have had 6,500 overdose deaths last year. We had 109,000. I wish we had its problems.
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It's a longer story, but I believe David was the butterfly whose effects led to the decriminalization of non-prescribed buprenorphine in Vermont and Rhode Island, and that should be the law of the land. One day I will show everyone the directed acyclic graph that starts with him.
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I turned 27 on September 10th, 2001. That night I wrote if I died the next morning, I'd have lived a good life. On 9/11, at Ground Zero, I almost did, trying in vain to save others. Remember the thousands who never got to write another page, and hold their loved ones close.
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@ABC30
People do not overdose from being around fentanyl or getting it on their clothing or even skin or breathing it in for that matter.
Stop perpetuating pernicious myths that make officers stressed out for no reason.
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🧵A lot changed in policing since the murder of George Floyd, and the ensuing upheaval. Nobody seems to have systematically asked US chiefs of police about these changes, so we surveyed a randomized national sample of them. Our preprint's title sums it up.
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"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." - Orwell's 1984
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Overdose deaths are surging to record levels in the wake of the pandemic, and with all we're facing we have so little bandwidth left.
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The first few paragraphs of this article are hard to read. A person with severe mental illness is deinstitutionalized, given service-intensive housing, meds, and a psych appointment, immediately disappears, and goes on to push a woman in front of a train.
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At the heart of American policing's learned hypervigilance, and what hinders reform and eventually limits comparisons with police from other nations is the inescapable fact that we are a violent nation with more guns than people and we seem to revel in it.
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South Dakota lawmakers proposed a bill to make it a felony to expose police to fentanyl because they could overdose. I spoke w/the
@argusleader
about this myth. A bipartisan committee just killed the bill. So happy to have helped science prevail over fear.
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In Houston, a woman shot at a dog and hit her 5 year old son.
TX just passed a law that any adult can buy & carry a gun with no checks or training.
Next they'll probably expand the law so children & dogs can carry guns for protection from those people.
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This important paper finds opioid addiction treatment that doesn't include buprenorphine or methadone, i.e. "abstinence," is associated with a greater risk of overdose death than no treatment at all. It seems time to stop calling abstinence "treatment."
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If wardens, sheriffs, governors & mayors were re-elected, promoted, voted out or fired based on the recidivism rates of the prisoners their penal systems incarcerated, there wouldn't be a jail or prison in the United States without medication-based treatment for opioid addiction.
Today 57 DAs, Sheriffs & CJ leaders called for expansion of medication-assisted treatment in our jails & prisons. MAT saves lives and should be a common practice nationwide. TY
@SarahFairVT
@DanSatterberg
@philadao
@TJforVermont
& others for speaking out.
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A room of new US citizens, here from around the world. The future of Vermont and the strength & promise of our nation. What makes us great.
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The DEA press release from June 10, 2016 that warns police officers can overdose and die from incidentally touching or breathing fentanyl, which is not true and causes needless fear, has finally been removed from the government's website.
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From Brazil to Baltimore, when the government doesn't effectively police, people fill the void. The wealthy with armed guards that privilege their personal & business interests. The poor often fall victim to gangs. Both are terrible for equality & justice.
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Great news:
@HowardCenterVT
's syringe exchange will soon start prescribing buprenorphine to walk-in users who feel they need it, even if they aren't ready to commit to long-term treatment. It will lead many there, and it will *definitely* save lives.
#BTV
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The remains of "Little Miss Nobody" were found in the Arizona desert in 1960, her identity known but to God. Now, after 62 years, sheriffs have tied her DNA to an abduction over 500 miles away in New Mexico. Her name was Sharon. She was four.
@missingkids
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Getting your PhD on Tuesday in NYC at the
@GC_CUNY
and skiing up Bolton at dawn in Vermont on Thursday is... a perfect week.
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Imagine seeing a man enter a supermarket with a combat rifle, calling the police, being told he's just exercising his constitutional rights, and having seconds to decide whether you need to run for your life. Other nations have chosen not to live this way.
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The most unbelievable aspect of this overdose epidemic that kills 100,000 people a year is that we have a medication that decisively reverses overdoses, and two medications proven effective at treating the addiction. This is not a failure of science, but systems and governments.
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Thank you, commissioner. You have my word I was in full compliance with the law when I crashed. Ten broken bones, later, I'm grateful to still be here and to be feeling such support. Thank you for your constant leadership and inspiration.
My thoughts are with
@BrandondelPozo
and his family as he recuperates from a biking accident that happened over this past weekend. Wishing him all the best and a speedy recovery.
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I spent 19 years on the NYPD. This is a🧵for uniformed members of the city's correctional service who want to arm themselves with the evidence they need to be safe on the job. Jails are dangerous, but you aren't at real risk of occupational fentanyl exposure. Spread the word.
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Helping people--including people in desperate straits--learn the facts and make the decisions that can help keep them alive is one of a community's basic responsiblities. Proud to be on a team that's taking a national lead in this.
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Police Officer Ella French was killed on August 7th. The suspects are in custody. One of them, armed with a gun, was chased, tackled and held by community members. Don't say communities don't value their cops. May Ella rest in peace. She had hardly lived.
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At first, the Army called him a traitor.
"Thompson experienced PTSD, alcoholism, divorce, and severe nightmare disorder.
"30 years later, he was awarded the Soldier's Medal, the Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy."
He died at 62.
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Arresting for unprescribed buprenorphine accomplishes nothing. Taking it saves lives. When
@SarahFairVT
& I took the stance of refusing to arrest & prosecute for it in 2018, we were alone in the US. Not anymore. Police & prosecutors should follow
#BTV
& now... Philly!
#GOEAGLES
In 2018,
@SarahFairVT
stopped prosecuting mere possession of Buprenorphine-based addiction treatment medications. Her county saw a 50% reduction in overdose deaths over the next year.
@philadao
is following her lead as we work to reduce overdose deaths here in Philly.
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So I'm in Chicago taking the train and as I emerged on the platform, the conductor, who had closed the doors, gestured to me to see if he needed to open them again to let me on. As a lifelong New Yorker, I totally assumed he was taunting me.
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A man started shooting everyone in a bank in Kentucky. People tried to lock themselves into the vault to survive. The shooter was a good guy with a gun until this morning. 2A purists will blame the victims for not bringing their own rifles to the bank.
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