As of Wednesday, Monroe County (N.Y.) has seen 112 heroin overdoses — 17 of which were fatal — during the first month and a half of 2018, according to report from the Democrat & Chronicle.
Monroe County officials have established a heroin task force in response to the growing number of heroin overdoses. The task force will leverage real-time data to identify heroin hotspots and work across local police municipalities to investigate and potentially bring homicide charges against drug dealers who sell fatal doses of heroin.
Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley announced the task force Wednesday and said the county's heroin problem was "getting worse," according to the Democrat & Chronicle.
"I'm sure our statistics are going to surpass what happened last year," Ms. Doorley said. "This problem is not going away."
In 2017, the county experienced at least 740 drug overdoses with 140 of them being fatal, according to data compiled by local law enforcement cited by the Democrat & Chronicle. The county's medical examiner has not yet released an official total of 2017 overdose deaths.
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