The Toronto police will begin equipping officers with the opioid overdose reversal drug Naloxone sometime this year, despite concerns about Special Investigations Unit scrutiny when overdoses are fatal.

In an agenda considered by the Toronto Police Services Board on Thursday, Chief Mark Saunders says all frontline patrol officers in four downtown divisions will be equipped and trained to use the nasal spray, along with supervisors and specialized officers elsewhere in the city.

The spray kits will be paid for by Toronto Public Health and Saunders says they require minimal training to use.

Naloxone is proven to be able to reverse the often fatal effects of a fentanyl overdose. Fentanyl is a synthetic painkiller believed to be 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin.

In 2016, 186 people died of opioid overdoses in Toronto.

Since the majority of opioid overdoses last year occurred in the downtown, the spray is being given to every frontline officer in the four police divisions that patrol the area bounded by Lake Shore Boulevard, the Don Valley Parkway, Bloor Street and Bathurst Street.

All of the city’s existing supervised injection sites are also located in this area.

Elsewhere in the city, only supervisors and specialized officers, such as those in the Toronto Police drug squad, will be given the spray.

The spray is considered a last resort, and Saunders told the board Thursday that firefighters and paramedics prefer to assist overdose patients by “managing the patient’s airway, supporting ventilation and respiratory support.”

“Under this deployment model, officers only administer Naloxone nasal spray as needed when they arrive first on scene of an overdose call and paramedic or fire service attendance is not imminent,” Saunders wrote in a report submitted to the board.

From 2015 to 2017, data indicates police arrived at the scene of a suspected overdose ahead of fire or paramedics only 2.7 per cent of the time.

Earlier this month, the province’s Special Investigations Unit said it would consider any instance where a person was admitted to hospital or died as police administered Naloxone to be worth investigating, despite calls by police chiefs to make those interactions exempt.

“A high per percentage of opioid overdose situations result in admission to hospital, a threshold that requires Toronto Police Service to notify the S.I.U.,” Saunders wrote. “It is anticipated that the resulting impact of numerous notifications and subsequent invocations of the S.I.U. investigative mandate would be organizationally significant and detrimental to our members.”

Saunders said police will hire a doctor to oversee their Naloxone program.

The OPP, Ottawa police, Peel Regional Police and Ottawa police issue Naloxone as standard frontline equipment.

In York and Durham regions, only supervisors carry it, while it is not used at all by Hamilton police.