It promises to be a long, bumpy spring for Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown, who for the second week in a row came away with a lot of “no”s in response to his request for more money from the county Board of Supervisors to fight the ravages of fentanyl and other drug overdoses.
“You need to do something,” an insistent Brown exhorted the county supervisors. Just as insistently, one of the supervisors replied that they already had and would like some acknowledgement, while others questioned whether the solution Brown proposed — approving the creation of a second five-person crew of narcotics investigators — was the most effective response.
Voted into office in 2006, Brown is one of the few elected officials in the county able to be somber and agitated in the same breath. Last week, he told the supervisors that 226 county residents died of drug overdoses last year. Just last week, he said this Tuesday, another three had died. In March, he noted, a 14-year-old junior high school student from Santa Maria had overdosed. Driving these numbers is the arrival of fentanyl on the scene, infamously deadly in even the smallest of doses.