CHICAGO (AP) — Maps released by the Chicago Police Department show shootings and ambulance runs for heroin overdoses on the city’s West Side overlap almost exactly.
Police analysts reviewed 2016 Chicago Fire Department calls for opioid overdoses on the West Side. They looked at cases in which paramedics administered a heroin-treatment drug called NARCAN.
Narcotics investigator Lt. Matthew Cline says the use of NARCAN is in areas where the city has the largest concentrations of open-air markets.
Cline says the markets have been the main sources of the violence on the West Side, with some of the shootings linked to turf battles among gangs.
Authorities announced the connection between overdoses and gun violence as they revealed the arrest of more than 50 people in a joint investigation by the police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Guns, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine were seized during the arrests.
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