SCPD And Purple Rock Project Spread Narcan Awareness In Suffolk County

SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY — The opioid epidemic is running rampant in Suffolk County and community members are coming together to help prevent more overdose-related deaths.

Over the summer, the Suffolk County Police Department and the Purple Rock Project, an organization dedicated to helping people who've lost loved ones to opioids heal, joined forces to train Long Islanders to use Nalozone, aka Narcan, the medication that reverses opioid overdoses.

The organizations attended seven Alive After Five events in Patchogue and Bay Shore, where they trained over 1,800 people to use Narcan and distributed 3,604 doses of the medication. Each kit people received at no cost contained two doses of the life-saving antidote.

SCPD Emergency Medical Service Officers Jason Byron and Alex Trzepizur conducted the Narcan training while other members of the police department shared information about opioids and Narcan.

Byron also talked to many young teens and adults about the 911 Good Samaritan Law, which allows people to call 911 without fear of arrest if they are having a drug or alcohol overdose that requires emergency medical care or if they witness someone overdosing.

Alongside the Narcan training booth was a memorial rock and information station run by the Purple Rock Project founder Carole Trottere, who lost her son Alex to fentanyl in 2018.

Trottere's organization supplies purple-painted rocks that people can inscribe with the names of loved ones they've lost to overdoses. The rocks are then exhibited at the Suffolk County Environmental Center at the Scully Estate, Tree Memorial and Serenity Garden, 550 South Bay Avenue, Islip and other locations as a reminder of how many Long Islanders have died from O.D. and fentanyl poisonings.

“Writing a child’s name on a rock may seem like a small thing, but I think it is a way of saying to the world that their child was once here,” said Trottere. “One young woman said she had so many names to write on a rock that she ran out of room.

Trottere said that over the summer, around 50 people created rocks in memory of someone they knew who had died of a substance-related cause, mostly from fentanyl.

Over one million people have died since 1999 from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2023, there were an estimated 366 fatal fentanyl overdoses in Suffolk, down 8.2% from 399 confirmed deaths in 2022.