Commissioner Ryder's eyes are on East Meadow

We have to know where it is that people are overdosing. We have to know where it is that people are getting these drugs.”

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas

Nassau County officials are fighting the opioid scourge by targeting the communities that are most affected — and East Meadow is second on the county’s list.

At a March 14 news conference at East Meadow Fire Department headquarters, County Executive Laura Curran and Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder an-nounced that East Meadow has the second-highest overdose rate in the county, behind only Massapequa.

Ryder introduced a plan that he had outlined in Massapequa only two weeks earlier, which includes the use of software called Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program, or OD MAP. It tracks the locations of and patterns between opioid overdoses and nearby crime.

“We’re going after this neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street,” Ryder said. “We’re not going to arrest ourselves out of the problem. But we sure could push these people where they need to be, which is in treatment.”

John Priest, an assistant to the Nassau County fire marshal and an EMFD member, said he believed Ryder’s proposal could save lives. Priest found his 22-year old son Rob in bed after he fatally overdosed on April 9, 2012. Rob was a member of the Fire Department and, his father said, “He was a good kid. He was athletic, and my wife and I weren’t able to recognize the warning signs that he was a heroin addict.”

Ryder confirmed that there had been 57 overdoses, seven of them fatal, in East Meadow since Jan. 1, 2017. That number did not include patients admitted to Nassau University Medical Center after overdosing.

According to county statistics, East Meadow jumped from the 11th-highest overdose rates in 2015, with three fatalities, to seventh-highest in 2016, with six, and now second-highest. In that same time period, police apprehended four drug dealers who were selling Xanax, cocaine and concentrated cannabis in the East Meadow area, and there were 69 arrests involving larcenies from cars.

“No longer could we say, ‘Not our child, not our town,’” Ryder added. “And unfortunately, some of your children are going to be arrested. But we know that that arrest will lead them on the path of recovery.”

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said that using OD MAP allows the county to increase its foresight. “We have to know where it is that people are overdosing,” she said. “We have to know where it is that people are getting these drugs.”

OD MAP accompanies Ryder’s effort to target the opioid scourge through the Commissioner’s Community Council, a police task force with a subdivision in each of the county’s 19 legislative districts. He and 13th District Legislator Thomas McKevitt chose retired NCPD officer John Nikiel, 63, of East Meadow, to lead the council in the 13th District.

The county was also scheduled to give residents a chance to voice their concerns at a town hall meeting on Tuesday at 7 p.m., after press time, at EMFD headquarters.

“Through awareness, through getting people into treatment [and] through recognizing the signs of overdose,” Priest said, “you could help your child.”

According to Ryder, the county will continue to move into each opioid “hot zone” and return 60 days later to assess what has changed and what still needs to be addressed.