Heroin overdoses surge in Lynn

LYNN – The latest police statistics show crime declined to date this year in categories including rape and burglaries, but the city’s high heroin overdose rate climbed sharply.There were 85 overdoses, not including heroin deaths, during this year’s first seven months compared to 57 for the same time period in 2012, according to a Police Department crime analysis. Heroin overdose deaths for the same time period stood at 11 compared to 15 last year.Police Chief Kevin Coppinger said heroin’s comparatively inexpensive price is just one factor that explains the overdose surge.”There are a lot of contributing factors. Once dealers have you hooked, they know they have a client for life,” he told city councilors Tuesday.Burglaries for the first half of the year totaled 269, according to police statistics, compared to 609 reported for all of 2012. A five-year look at burglary rates in the city indicates crimes in that category have fallen from a high of 770 in 2008.Robberies reported annually dropped from 212 in 2010 to 175 last year, according to police statistics, with 86 robberies reported between January and June this year. Reductions in these crimes as well as rapes and motor vehicle larcenies translate into a smaller shift in the crime rate compared to recent years.”We’re down 1 percent year to date,” the chief said.Coppinger said officers are assigned to drug enforcement and said police, with other law enforcement agencies, have worked to reduce youth gang-related crime. Ward 6 Councilor Peter Capano said he has seen the results.”It is nothing like it was a few years ago,” he said.Police Department crime maps show motor vehicle break-in reports scattered across the city’s inner neighborhoods. But aggravated assaults are clustered on a crime map around Washington Street and bordering Highlands neighborhoods with breaking and entering reports concentrated in the Highlands and neighborhoods bordered, in part, by lower Chestnut and Essex streets.Coppinger said police continue to be concerned about local immigrants falling prey to robberies. Efforts to urge new arrivals to the city to open bank accounts and use caution moving around the city could help keep immigrants from being “easy targets” for crime, the chief said.He said the link between adolescent exposure to pharmaceutical drugs, including common medicine chest prescriptions, and heroin use must be recognized by anyone working to reduce overdoses.”The first and foremost thing is prevention,” he said.