Overdoses in plain sight plague inner city

An increasingly troubling scene unfolded behind an inner-city school during lunch hour Thursday, as students walking down the back lane barely slowed while a woman sat hunched over, appearing to overdose.

Discarded needles and used overdose-reversing vials littered the ground around her, near the rear door to Gordon Bell High School.

A man supporting her said he had administered naloxone, helping to revive her before she was able to stagger to her feet and walk away toward a nearby coffee shop. One passerby stopped briefly to ask whether anyone needed her to call 911, lamenting the worsening drug-toxicity crisis as she left the area.

It was another overdose unfolding in plain sight in a neighbourhood where such scenes no longer seem to draw a second glance. The Winnipeg School Division warned about similar incidents occurring near schools across the city.

“We have a situation where we have people who are struggling, and once in a while, those people end up around schools,” Winnipeg School Division superintendent Matt Henderson said Thursday. “We’ve had principals have to resuscitate people on the playground. It’s a concern.”

Henderson said he is not trying to sensationalize the issue, but argued methamphetamine and fentanyl have created a challenge that requires new solutions.

“We’ve had principals have to resuscitate people on the playground. It’s a concern.”

He declined to identify which schools have seen staff intervene in overdoses or drug-related incidents, describing the issue as “pervasive” and not limited to Winnipeg’s inner city.

He pointed to Gordon Bell as one school where additional support is on the way.

The school is set to add two safety hosts from Zoongizi Ode to support people in the surrounding community. The non-profit organization’s safety hosts already work inside Millennium Library downtown.

Community safety hosts are licensed security guards with non-violent crisis intervention training who carry naloxone and first aid kits, as well as snacks. They conduct general outreach and greet visitors in libraries, ACCESS Centres and other inner-city sites.

Zoongizi Ode, Persons Community Solutions and other organizations partnered to create the program in 2021. The safety hosts have since grown to include 50 front-line workers, many of whom have lived experience with poverty, addiction and related challenges.

“They build relationships in waiting rooms and entry ways and libraries — wherever they’re working — and their focus is on allowing everybody to safely, happily and equitably use these spaces,” said Daniel Waycik, operations director for Persons Community Solutions, which recruits and hires safety hosts.

Waycik called the introduction of safety hosts into the school system a full circle moment because the roles were created in response to student and parent interest in an alternative to conventional security.

The two hosts, paid for by the Winnipeg School Division, are slated to start working out of Gordon Bell on a full-time basis in the fall.

Their presence, soft skills and ability to spend time talking with students, staff and other visitors to the school will bring “the collective nervous system to a calmer place,” Waycik said.

“I think the police presence at a time like this is very important.”

Since the start of the school year — at the request of the division — the West End BIZ has been sending patrollers to Gordon Bell on weekday mornings.

Executive director Joe Kornelsen said the BIZ is eager to help, even though the school is slightly outside its jurisdiction. “The biz community thrives when the community thrives, when students are doing well,” Kornelsen said.

He noted that his team, which has witnessed an uptick in “erratic behaviour associated with drug use,” especially near Portage Avenue, regularly hears about employees experiencing threatening and uncomfortable behaviour.

Kornelsen is calling on the province to put in place community accountability standards for transitional housing sites, such as 333 Maryland St., to better protect all residents in the neighbourhood.

Mayor Scott Gillingham said he encourages schools to maintain regular contact with the Winnipeg Police Service and supports efforts to address open drug use, including the use of school resource officers across divisions.

“I think the police presence at a time like this is very important,” he said.

Gillingham added the city will continue working with the province to connect people with housing and wraparound supports.

“I believe we need more detox centres and more addictions treatment facilities,” Gillingham said, but stopped short of saying a managed encampment site would help.

The public service recommended the city drop the idea last month after it was directed to determine the feasibility of such a site for this spring and summer. Gillingham supported the recommendation to axe the proposed pilot.

“The managed encampment would only have served a couple dozen people, maybe three dozen people at a time,” he said Thursday. “The need is much larger than that, and the managed encampment would have required multiple millions of dollars of city services.”

The pilot would have also needed provincial support, which Gillingham said was “clearly” not there.

— with files from Maggie Macintosh and Joyanna Pursaga

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca