Jim Ross column: Here is community leadership on display – News – Ocala.com

The Ocala Police Department is going above and beyond

The Ocala Police Department is not taking the easy way out.

Our drug overdose crisis isn’t, strictly speaking, that agency’s problem. Its mission is to catch the bad guys, put them in jail, and protect the community.

It’s a tough task, as anyone who reads the Star-Banner’s daily crime coverage knows. The department doesn’t lack for work.

OPD could stay in its silo and allow the medical and social service communities to take the lead on all these drug overdoses. After all, the agency’s employees aren’t doctors or social workers. They are cops.

Or, in the alternative, the agency could section off its part of the crisis — catching drug dealers — and leave the majority of the work, and the public messaging, to someone else.

But that’s not what is happening.

The department knows that the overdose crisis is a community scourge. It knows that leaders take holistic, not fragmented, approaches.

Simply put, a good leader never says: “That’s not my job.”

That’s why we saw a somber Chief Greg Graham on Facebook last week issuing a video message that implores the community to respond to this crisis.

The city of Ocala alone had six overdose deaths in the first 10 days of December. For the year, the city has had 161 overdoses and 25 deaths.

Graham begged people to come to the police department if they need help. OPD has an amnesty program that connects addicts with treatment.

He also issued a stone-faced warning to drug dealers: If the junk you sell leads to a death, you’re going to jail — for murder, not just dealing.

The Ocala Police Department has been out front on this issue for a long time, arranging a Narcan program that officers use to revive overdose victims and working out the aforementioned amnesty program.

The agency hasn’t been alone: Many other people, agencies and institutions have made this crisis their top priority and have invested energy, resources and countless hours of work.

OPD is spotlighted in this column because of two notable timing coincidences.

First: The day after the Facebook message was posted, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new national report summarizing the drugs most frequently involved in overdose deaths between 2011 and 2016.

The report is worth quoting at length:

• “Among drug overdose deaths that mentioned at least one specific drug, the 10 most frequently mentioned drugs during 2011–2016 included fentanyl, heroin, hydrocodone, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, alprazolam, diazepam, cocaine, and methamphetamine.”

• “Oxycodone ranked first in 2011, heroin during 2012–2015, and fentanyl in 2016. During the study period, cocaine consistently ranked second or third.”

• “From 2011 through 2016, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin more than tripled, as did the rate of drug overdose deaths involving methamphetamine. The rate of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl and fentanyl analogs doubled each year from 2013 through 2016.”

None of this would surprise Marion County officials.

Second coincidence: The day after Chief Graham was displaying solid leadership in Ocala last week, a lawyer in Broward County was telling a judge that Scot Peterson — the only armed officer on duty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when the Feb. 14 shooting rampage started there — had no “legal duty” to protect the campus that day.

(You might remember that Peterson has been criticized for not immediately rushing into the building and confronting the shooter.)

“From a legal standpoint, there was no duty” to protect, the lawyer said, according to an account in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The lawyer made this statement when seeking dismissal of a negligence lawsuit that one of the shooting victims’ families filed against Peterson. (The judge did not grant the request.)

It must be noted: The lawyer was representing his client, so he can’t be faulted for uttering what, to a layman’s ears, sounds like an absurd claim.

Also, Peterson can’t be faulted for defending himself. He’s not above the law, but he’s not beneath it, either.

Still, with all that said…no legal duty to protect? No obligation?

What is that?

When it comes to the drug overdose crisis, OPD isn’t looking for ways to evade responsibility. It’s looking for ways to serve.

Contact Jim Ross at 671-6412 or jim.ross@starbanner.com. Follow him on Twitter @jimrossOSB