Philadelphia Police Chief: Opioids more deadly to Blacks than gun violence

Commissioner Richard Ross says the nation's worsening opioid crisis is hitting his city worse than firearms

Apr 2, 2018

Philadelphia’s top cop says that more African-Americans are dying as a result of opioid overdoes than they are of homicides in the city and the numbers back it up.

“A lot of people don’t know that,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard J. Ross said last Friday during a Philadelphia Tribune Editorial Board meeting. “In this city, more people of color are dying from opioids than they do of gunshots.”

Numbers tell grim tale

According to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, 269 African-Americans overdosed in 2016 as part of a total of 907 opioid-related deaths. That same year, 235 African-Americans were victims of homicide in the city.

In 2017, the city recorded 313 homicides, the most since 2012. Through the first nine months of 2017 there were 248 African American deaths due to overdoses.

Conversely, in all of 2017, 253 of the city’s 313 killings were of African American. The Department of Public Health reported 956 opioid-related deaths through the first three quarters of 2017. Projections by the agency are that there will be approximately 1,200 total overdose deaths.

That projects to as many as 330 African-American deaths via overdose.

“You would think that if we put a spotlight on an area where there have been ‘x’ number of overdoses that the average addicted person would stay away from that,” Ross said. “No, they flock to that—even if it’s killing people—because now they know where they can get the best drugs. It’s a weird dynamic but it’s real, and it lends itself to a major issue.”

The city’s Kensington section – which is in North Philadelphia, east of Broad Street — has become a hotspot for opioids. During a meeting with the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists last month, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said that many of the opioid deaths in and around North Philly are of people who traveled to the city from nearby areas like Baltimore, Camden, and Wilmington, Delaware.

A broad problem

Opioid deaths among African-Americans is not just a growing problem in Philadelphia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the death rate for all Americans from Opioids is up with Black Americans experiencing a 4 percent increase.

According to the 2017 report, the drug death rate is rising most steeply among Blacks, particularly those who are between the ages of 45 and 64.

Ross has continued to struggle with Kenney’s proposed “safe injection sites”, or facilities that would allow people to use drugs and facilitate access to medical care and drug treatment. The proposal has drawn the ire of neighborhood groups as well as members of the Philadelphia City Council. Some have openly asked where all of this concern was when drugs were killing Black and Latino residents in the 1980s and 90s. Once staunchly against it, the epidemic has Ross. looking at it a little differently now.

“I will tell you when I don’t have the answer,” Ross said. “People are dying all over the place. And as a public safety official I do view that as part of my responsibility. I’m not saying that means I should be for safe injections sites. But I struggle with watching people drop and die with the frequency that they are.”