Boulder police want to know who is distributing unusually strong or tainted fentanyl, which they believe may have led to a concentrated string of overdoses this week. 

Starting Tuesday, five people overdosed on fentanyl in a 36-hour period. Police wonder if the pills originated from the same batch, which may be stronger than usual — or created on purpose as a deadly cocktail mix.

“Five in such a short period is a lot for us,” Boulder Police Deputy Chief Stephen Redfearn said. “Our radar is up. The sheer number typically means something is tainted.”

All five people survived. All five were separate instances.

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Redfearn said that, usually, fentanyl pills are blue, but the Boulder Police Department drug task force recently started seeing white pills with blue flecks in them. They’re stamped with the code “M30,” which is typical for a fentanyl pill.

One of those blue-speckled pills was discovered in the stash of one of the overdose victims, but since the other victims had consumed everything they had, police are not sure if the five were linked.

The first three fentanyl overdoses happened Tuesday, two of those three at the same Boulder park. Then two more occurred Wednesday. Some victims overdosed in their apartments.

None of the overdose survivors were students at the University of Colorado.

Most of the victims’ lives were saved by first responders armed with Narcan, a nasal spray that is easy to administer and reverses the opioid’s affect in seconds.

The first of the five

On the hottest day of the year, Boulder’s Central Park at 13^th Street and Canyon Boulevard was crowded with tent camps, skateboarders and an office lunch crowd catching fresh air in the shade.

The park is famous for its Boulder Bandshell amphitheater, but it’s often ground zero for drug use.

At around 2:30, Boulder Police Officer Mike West rushed to the park on an urgent call of a man who had possibly overdosed.

“When I got there he was still, not really breathing and his face was blue,” said the 19-year BPD veteran.

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Celeste Dekker, 71, who is recently homeless and handicapped, saw the whole thing. She said West and the first responders were “Johnny-on-the-spot.”

West’s body worn camera video showed a man lying on his face under a tree. A set of crutches tumbled on the ground and an empty wheelchair sat nearby. West asked a couple of lingering people as the sound of sirens from an oncoming ambulance got louder: “Anybody see him take anything?”

No one gave him a definitive answer. 

One person told West he had already administered Narcan to the overdose victim, who was flat on his face in the dirt. West knew that the first burst of the life-saving drug administered by a citizen wasn’t enough, so he tore open a new package.

“Are you with us?” West asked and turned him on his side.

“He came around,” West told The Denver Gazette Thursday. “My job is to get them to hold on until the ambulance gets there.”

Just three weeks ago, West’s quick thinking brought a different overdose victim back from sure death.

He found a man unresponsive in a tent, pulled him out, and administered the nasal spray, which comes in a package so tiny and light it can fit in a coat pocket.

“(Narcan) works like a miracle,” said West.

He has been a cop since long before fentanyl showed up and said this recent spate of fentanyl overdoses is “just another part of the job.”

Back at Central Park, Dekker held back tears when she heard that five people had overdosed in such a short time. She has lost five friends to fentanyl.

“I hate it. I’d rather see them on heroin,” said Dekker, but she had little hope the police will find out where the possibly tainted fentanyl came from.

“No one’s a snitch around here,” she said.

The next challenge

Now that fentanyl has flooded the market, researchers with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are bracing for the next illicit drug trend.

Andres Guerrero, with the CDPHE’s Drug Prevention Unit, said that even though the animal tranquilizer Xylazine is catching on along the East Coast, it has not hit Colorado with near the force of fentanyl.

Still, Colorado has already had four deaths. Known on the streets as “Tranq,” the drug is taken intravenously.

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“We always have to keep an eye on what’s new,” said Geurrero. “The drug market is an ever-changing thing.”

Geurrero said that addicts are getting hooked on Tranq because the high lasts longer than fentanyl. But often the two drugs are mixed.

This week’s five fentanyl overdoses in just a day-and-a-half was a fifth of the amount Boulder police have seen the entire year.

Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty is waiting for police to track down the dealer or dealers who sold what could be one fatally tainted batch.

“I am confident that work is well underway,” Dougherty said.