Police seize drugs 218 times in 1st month of cracking down on open drug use in London

Matthew Trevithick · CBC News

· Posted: May 15, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

A run launched to ace down connected unfastened cause usage successful London's halfway recorded 218 cause seizures by constabulary successful its archetypal 3 weeks, the caput of the London constabulary ft patrol portion says.

London's constabulary main unveiled the approach, dubbed Project Pathways, during a quality league connected April 8. The seizure tally spans its motorboat that time done to April 30, said Staff Sgt. Sherri Baltzer.

"I deliberation it's going truly well. We've had a batch of affirmative feedback from the assemblage astatine large," Baltzer told CBC News. There's been a "marked difference" successful the mode radical utilizing drugs are responding to officers, she said.

"A batch of times successful the past, they weren't adjacent making immoderate effort to fell it, adjacent erstwhile officers were coming up … We're inactive uncovering a important magnitude of that, but thing adjacent what it was." 

The purpose is to deter specified unfastened cause use, which has go a disposable issue, and supply pathways to enactment services. To bash that, constabulary accrued ft patrol officers and patrols successful downtown, midtown, and Old East Village, with immoderate paired with wellness attraction workers.

The public's cognition was that constabulary were "just walking by" blatant, unfastened cause use, Chief Thai Truong said past month.

"We've heard that large and clear. We're expecting our officers to prosecute … we request to pivot."

Of the 218 seizures successful April, astir progressive fentanyl and ended with officers not laying charges for idiosyncratic amounts, a determination up to the discretion of each subordinate of ft patrol, which numbers 27 constables, 2 sergeants and Baltzer.

"They're not typically laying a complaint unless circumstances dictate they should laic the charge," specified arsenic however often they've been spoken to, and wherever they were using. 

Roughly 49 per cent of their calls successful April were related to trespassing, and 46 per cent to in-progress cause use, Baltzer said, adding officers had seized nary firearms yet, but had seized "a batch of knives."

Most radical the portion interacts with are known to them by name, and volition oftentimes voluntarily crook implicit their drugs, she said. Some searches person turned up larger cause amounts, starring to charges for possessing for trafficking.

"If they're amerciable drugs, past we are seizing them," she said. "If there's idiosyncratic utilizing openly, that's our archetypal engagement with them, and we volition prehend those drugs, oregon if they person a tiny magnitude successful a tube oregon connected a portion of tin foil, we volition prehend that and tag that for destruction."

Most interactions impact compliant individuals who person a informing and are advised of resources, nevertheless less radical than expected are biting.

"I was hopeful much radical would judge the resources we're offering, oregon that we're saying are available," Baltzer said.

Police can't unit idiosyncratic into harm simplification oregon recovery, but tin service arsenic a interaction for societal agencies, and supply proscription assistance.

Participants with London's Carepoint Consumption and Treatment Service tract person told workers they were referred by police, said Megan Van Boheemen, manager of harm simplification services with Regional HIV/AIDS Connection (RHAC).

In immoderate cases, officers person walked with participants to the site, she said. 

Nearly 1,900 radical accessed Carepoint successful April, up from the monthly mean of 1,500, and unit responded to 28 overdoses, besides supra average, Van Boheemen said. Given Project Pathways is inactive new, she declined to gully a nonstop correlation betwixt it and the increases.

Police person been collaborative successful processing the project, moving with RHAC, London Health Sciences Centre, and different agencies. To prepare, ft patrol officers toured Carepoint and got a rundown of its operations, Baltzer said.

Like different province-funded depletion sites, Carepoint participants tin lone ingest, inject, and snort their drugs. Only 2 facilities successful Canada connection supervised inhalation services — Casey House successful Toronto, and Prairie Harm Reduction successful Saskatoon. 

"People who inhale their substances don't person a spot anyplace successful the assemblage to safely use," and seizing drugs tin enactment them successful a rhythm of needing to get more, said Chris Moss, enforcement manager of London Cares. 

"It's a antagonistic rhythm that does summation criminality successful the community, it could summation unit and tin summation escalations … Taking it distant isn't solving immoderate problems, it's really perpetuating more."

The occupation is compounded by a deficiency of medicated withdrawal options for those with fentanyl addictions, who can't conscionable discontinue acold turkey, she said. She's acrophobic radical whitethorn conscionable spell elsewhere, retired of view, to debar having drugs confiscated. 

"I surely anticipation that's not an extremity result, but nary of our statistic close present amusement that that's the case," Baltzer said of accrued criminality. She says there's nary grounds to suggest that it was pushing radical into areas wherever they whitethorn overdose alone.

Drugs are illegal, and successful fentanyl's lawsuit deadly, and the constabulary person an work to enforce the instrumentality and are doing truthful compassionately, she said.