Proactive Drug Overdose Investigations
Identifying and Pursuing the Source Before the Next Death Occurs
Overdoses have become a daily reality in modern policing — but too often, they’re treated like medical calls instead of the crime scenes they are. Whether the victim survives or not, every overdose is an opportunity to disrupt the dealer behind the poison.
This course trains officers to treat overdose scenes as the starting point of a targeted drug investigation. It walks students through investigative steps that can quickly identify and pursue the upstream source — often the same supplier responsible for multiple overdoses across a community.
You’ll learn how to gather key evidence at the scene, debrief grieving families, analyze phone records, flip cooperating sources, and ultimately build prosecutable cases — even in non-fatal situations. We use real case studies throughout the course to show how these investigations unfold in the real world, and how officers can build momentum quickly before leads go cold.
If you want to turn crisis response into case initiation, and help prevent the next overdose before it happens, this course gives you the tools.
Instructors:
Tanner Jenkins and Scott Courrege, J.D. (See "About Us" for bios.)
Topics:
Establishing Overdose Scenes as Investigative Starting Points
Scene Assessment & Evidence Collection
Family Debriefs: Building Trust and Gathering Leads
Call Detail Records & Toll Analysis
Background Checks & Open-Source Data Mining
Phone Pings & Real-Time Location Strategies
Physical Surveillance: Tight, Low-Visibility Ops
CI Development from Overdose Circles
Controlled Buys Linked to OD Events
UC Intros & Escalating Up the Chain
Search Warrants: Articulation and Execution
Proper Scene Search Protocols
Case Studies: Fatal and Non-Fatal OD Investigations
What You’ll Leave With:
A blueprint for investigating both fatal and non-fatal overdoses
Tools to turn tragedy into actionable intelligence
Legal strategies to build solid drug cases tied to overdose events
Methods to bring closure to families — and hold suppliers accountable