Nassau, Suffolk Counties Team Up to Create Heroin Task Force

Nassau and Suffolk County leaders have teamed up to create a Long Island Heroin Task Force to strengthen their enforcements against Long Island’s increasing heroin epidemic, elected officials announced Thursday.

The task force, which will be comprised of law enforcement officers from Nassau and Suffolk, looks to conduct heroin-related investigations, take down drug leaders by sharing knowledge and decrease the amount of narcotics that enter Long Island neighborhoods.

“The Long Island Heroin Task Force will leverage the collective resources of both police departments towards the investigation into drug crimes and to apprehend those who contribute to the heroin epidemic,” Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano said in a press release.

How bad is the heroin epidemic on Long Island? Check out the below heroin statistics courtesy of the Suffolk County Police Department, Nassau County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Nassau County Police Department Intelligence Unit.

Nassau County:

• Heroin arrests in 2015: 709
• Heroin arrests in 2014: 539
• Opiate arrests in 2015: 417
• Opiate arrests in 2014: 369
• Heroin overdoses in 2015: 245
• Fatal heroin overdoses in 2015: 58
• Opiate overdoses in 2015: 115
• Fatal opiate overdoses in 2015: 33
• Times Narcan was administered in 2015: 416

Suffolk County:

• Heroin arrests in 2015: 1,898
• Heroin arrests in 2014: 1,889
• Fatal heroin overdoses in 2015: 103
• Fatal heroin overdoses in 2014: 109
• Times Narcan was administered in 2015: 543 (Suffolk Police) and an additional 223 countywide
• Times Narcan was administered in 2014: 493 (Suffolk Police) and an additional 284 countywide

The Long Island Heroin Task Force members, four detectives and one supervisor, will be stationed in an undisclosed location in Nassau County. Federal funds will be utilized to hire an intel analyst that will be embedded with the task force, police say.

It is critical for Nassau and Suffolk counties to work together to combat this epidemic because “dealers who flood our communities with heroin don’t care about county lines or any lines for that matter,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said. “That is why this historic partnership is critical to fight these criminal operations which cross jurisdictions.”

Bellone says heroin is a “public health crisis” that is tearing communities apart one family at a time. “That is why we must continue to invest in public outreach, treatment programs, as well as drugs like Narcan which can save lives and Vivitrol, which can help stem addiction,” he said.

The creation of this task force was announced at the Nassau County Educational Heroin Summit and Rally in Baldwin by Mangano, Bellone, Nassau’s Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter and Suffolk Police Commissioner Timothy Sini.

The events featured government, law enforcement, school and medical experts who spoke about the latest treatments to battle heroin and opiate addiction.