Veteran Saskatoon police officer shares front-line look at downtown homelessness, addiction crisis

"Oh s--t."

At the mention of an overdose just metres away, Saskatoon Police Service Sgt. Chris Harris's demeanour — and language — shifted from sessional lecturer to first responder in a snap.

A man with dark hair and a zippered, grey hoodie was lying motionless on the concrete floor just inside what appeared to be a service door on the outside of Midtown Plaza.

Harris kneeled beside him and, with the composure of a carpenter running another board over his table saw, took the necessary steps to ensure the man lived.

Harris, a 19-year veteran of the police force, agreed to take CBC through Saskatoon's downtown for a tour of an area he has spent the past four years patrolling as part of the bike unit, also known as the community response unit.

In that role, he mostly patrols the downtown area. He often sees people, as he said, in the worst days of their lives.

Downtown is part of the city's core area that's facing a drug crisis. It reached an apex in recent months with a shocking number of overdoses that has worn the city's response mechanisms to a nub.

Prairie Harm Reduction, which houses the city's sole supervised consumption site, announced in the second last week of March it would be closing for the remainder of the month to relieve the strain on stressed employees. Two of the Saskatoon Public Library's locations, where staff were said to routinely stop deal with people using or selling drugs in the past, followed suit shortly after by temporarily closing as well.

The veteran police officer was explaining his perspective on issues of homelessness and addiction in the core when a man, standing on the south side of Midtown Plaza just off 20th Street East, called to him that, "a guy is OD-ing here."

It was just after 3:15 p.m. CST on a Friday afternoon.

Harris sprayed naloxone into the man's nose and called him by name — Harris was familiar with the man — while lightly shaking him. Then he spoke some commands into his radio.

Every now and then, the man made a sound that resembles a deep snore. Other than that, the small alcove where Harris attended to the man was quiet.

Harris said the man was breathing and had a pulse. He explained that the naloxone takes about five minutes to kick in. The man survived.

When Harris deals with someone overdosing, he's often called to the scene rather than stumbling onto it. He said this was about the fourth time in the past month that he had found someone in the middle of an overdose.