Burnaby RCMP’s facility for processing deadly street drugs a risk to detachment: top cop

Burnaby city council has agreed to spend $700,000 to upgrade a space local Mounties use to process deadly street drugs.

Before the fentanyl crisis began a few years ago, local officers weighed, logged, tested and packaged seized drugs on tables and benches in a space in the exhibit room before sending samples to a Health Canada lab for further testing, according to Burnaby RCMP Chief Supt. Deanne Burleigh.

With the rise of illicit fentanyl and even deadlier carfentanil, she said most detachments have gotten fume hoods, eyewash stations and ion scanners to protect officers handling the drugs from exposure.

“For any sort of fentanyl spill, I mean, it’s deadly,” Burleigh said. “The fume hood allows us a safe place to take these drugs that are on a street level and package them up in such a way that they’re not dangerous.”

In Burnaby, the equipment has been housed in a repurposed room off the detachment’s underground parking garage.

The problem with that set-up is that it isn’t in a self-contained space.

“The bad guys don’t necessarily package the drugs in such a way that they’re safe to handle,” Burleigh said, “so, when we take them and transport them and bring them to the office, there’s the risk that the packaging will fail. We can’t contain that failure right now.”

The new facility will be a sealed area with its own HVAC system, according to the report.

“If something happens, it seals down; it’s locked down,” Burleigh said. “There’s no contamination, and that’s the only area we have to clean up.”

Burleigh said the Chilliwack detachment had to be shut down and some staff taken to hospital during one incident involving airborne contamination while she was working there.

A feasibility study looked into a number of options for the new so-called “high-potency drug processing facility,” including an exterior addition to the detachment, an interior renovation and a stand-alone modular building.

The project approved by council is an interior renovation to the secured underground parkade.