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Read closer the Clearwater Police Department report on what happened to drugs missing from city Fire Department rescue trucks, and you may come away convinced that the quality of supervision in the department is even worse than previously thought.
Last month a veteran Clearwater paramedic, Darren Keith, was arrested, accused of removing an addictive liquid narcotic from the Sand Key fire station's medical supplies and replacing it with water. Keith himself reported that two vials of the medicine fentanyl had been tampered with. Police said he later confessed to using a syringe to withdraw the liquid medicine from two vials and put water back in, and then injecting himself with the drug.
A week later, a vial of morphine was reported missing from a fire station. No one was been arrested in that case.
A few days ago the full report written by Clearwater police investigators in the drug case was released. It reveals sloppy handling of drugs by the Fire Department, a failure to use even common sense in securing drugs, and lack of proper supervision. For example:
Powerful narcotics were not kept in a locked box, but "in a clear Tupperware container" on the rescue trucks until the recent disappearances, when the policy was changed and they were locked up.
When asked who might have had access to the missing narcotics, police were told by a fire official, "Anyone may have had access."
Paramedics are supposed to check their supply of narcotics at the start of each shift to make sure everything is there, but fire officials could not say how thoroughly they tackled the task.
According to the police report, after Keith reported that a vial of Fentanyl had been tampered with, a supervisor, Lt. Stan Loveday, told him to "write something up" about it. However, Loveday didn't check to see if Keith wrote anything.
Loveday told investigators that "securitywise, they were lax," according to the report. He told police about one day when the drug box was left inside an unlocked rescue vehicle parked behind the fire station. In another incident, vials of drugs were left unsecured on a desk in a fire station, according to a fire officer.
Fire departments maintain supplies of powerful drugs in case sick or injured patients need them. Strict procedures need to be in place to safeguard those medical supplies so they will be available to patients who need them and so they will not be stolen or altered.
There is no proof that patients were denied the treatment they needed because the medicines had been watered down or had disappeared from Clearwater Fire Department vehicles. However, given the poor attention to safety that is apparent in this police report, it is miraculous if they were not.