Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language that may be offensive to some readers.
In 2013, Insp. Conor King of the Victoria Police Department heard about the effects of illicit fentanyl for the first time.
“A couple of [officers] came back one day and they said that they had been talking to a street nurse, and the street nurse had said, and this was generally a quote, ‘something is kicking people in the ass,’” he said.
At the time, the foot patrol team King led, which was part of the Focused Enforcement Team, was accustomed to methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. He said they knew the effects of heroin, and a drug that would quickly knock someone unconscious was a concern for the team.
After undercover officers bought samples of the drugs, they had them tested and found traces of fentanyl – a surprise as the potent opioid was only seen as a pharmaceutical, typically as a patch, that replaced less potent painkillers like morphine and oxycodone.
“I thought, ‘It’s out there enough to be causing people to have these powerful and very negative effects, (so) let’s keep an eye on this,’ but I (was) not overly worried about it,” said King. “Clearly, I was very wrong.”
As the weeks and months passed by, he connected with drug enforcement officers with the RCMP, where they determined that it wasn’t fentanyl diverted from the medical supply – it was actually being sourced from China.
Prior to the flood of fentanyl on B.C.’s streets, responding to overdoses was a normal part of the job for paramedics. Oftentimes, the mobile medical responders were the healthcare system for those living on the streets and those with substance use issues, but the new wave of the opiate epidemic would prove to be a different beast.
“We just noticed that people started going down in overdoses, and they were really hard to bring up, like we would have to start using more Narcan,” said Ian Tait, an advanced care paramedic and unit chief who was working in Surrey when fentanyl started making it’s way into the hands of opiate users.
“They were going down faster and in large numbers. You could just see the system of it was just so different. Effectively, the drugs were poisoned by the very people that were making them and selling them, and their customers were dying,” he said.
ConorKing
A ‘great equalizer amongst opportunists’
On April 14, 2016, about three years after VicPD saw illicit fentanyl for the first time, the provincial government declared the public health emergency, which was welcomed by the department. As a result, officers were required to carry, and learn how to administer naloxone.
“We were very aware that we are in a crisis situation, you couldn’t help but notice it,” he said. “But when you think about it for a second, we started carrying drugs that we could administer to people. We’re not medical professionals, but all of a sudden we’re carrying drugs that we’re going to be using to reverse overdoses, which was a fundamental change in what policing was all about, because we are not health responders.”
When Tait started working on the ground 25 years ago, he remembers some overdose calls, and some communities were worse than others. Nowadays, between drugs, homelessness-related problems, and mental health calls, the majority of the work they do is dedicated to the epidemic.
“People with heart failures, people with heart attacks, we are actually seeing less of those people,” he said, adding that new medical advancements and promotion of health living has reduced other health-related calls, though the epidemic has led to delays in other calls.
“Thank goodness that we are, because(drugs are) completely taking over on a regular basis. It’s just one of those things where, when this becomes a bigger part of our work every day, there are going to be delays to other things. And unfortunately, that can also be really sad to watch.”
In 2017, the chief constable of VicPD asked King to find a way to stop the flow of fentanyl into Greater Victoria, which prompted Operation Fentanyl Focus, where numerous cop teams attempted to blitz-arrest fentanyl traffickers – from small-time dealers to high-end importers – and try to get the highest possible jail sentence as a deterrent.
After Operation Fentanyl Force overdoses would continue to climb for the next six years.
“Drug enforcement is a challenging endeavor. We don’t have a history of fantastic successes when it comes to drug enforcement,” said King.
King describes fentanyl as a “great equalizer amongst opportunists” for those who wanted to get into the drug business. A challenge with drug enforcement is that when dealers get arrested, they are quickly replaced by others.
As fentanyl started to overtake heroin as the go-to opioid, it became incredibly easy for dealers to buy the drug online and get it shipped in the mail. With the ease of access, King said VicPD changed their approach to using their resources to tackle the violence and other crimes that inevitably comes with an entrenched population, and a bull market for illicit drugs.
King says smart drug enforcement focuses “on offenders that are importing and distributing drugs who are also involved in other violent activity.
“Even people who work with these folks on the street or deal with them are often afraid of them,” he added. “They’re often victimized by those particular players in the drug market.”
VicPD fighting fentanyl
‘Our mental health injury is huge’
Fast forward to March 2026, Ambulance Paramedics of BC ratified a new collective agreement after narrowly avoiding strike action. The union argued for better pay and benefits as paramedics continue to play a huge role in healthcare – in 2025 BCEHS paramedics responded to an average of 108 overdose patients every day.
“Our burnout rate is huge. Our mental health injury is huge,” said Tait.
The same goes for cops, King says, as police deal with more sudden deaths then ever before. He recalled a time in 2017 when he was reading coroner data on the second floor of the VicPD headquarters when officers started discussing a nearby overdose over the radio.
A 22-year-old woman died just steps from the police department after she tried to access a harm reduction facility that was closed.
“For me, it was something of a turning point where I realized that we have to make sure that we’re doing everything we possibly can to help our health partners to keep people alive. I really took a position, like enforcement is important, but it is not as important as pulling out all the stops to find ways that the police can play a significant and meaningful role in health support,” he said.
For Tait, it’s a hard job but it’s worth continuing to support the community on the front lines.
“I have always said, in the universe there’s a balance, right? For every horrible thing you see and for every tragedy or some complete horror that goes on, there’s always that balancing act,” he said.