Get your facts straight, Congressman Josh Harder, before sending email blasts

Law enforcement officers need protection from black market fentanyl, sure. Like everyone else, and maybe more because cops’ jobs are likely to expose them to the potent and sometimes deadly drug.

So I don’t have a problem with federal legislation calling for training, resources and equipment aimed at keeping officers safe from fentanyl and other harmful substances. And our congressman, Rep. Josh Harder, has every right to sign on to the bill, called the Protecting First Responders from Secondary Exposure Act of 2021.

But a line must be drawn when politicians use misinformation to build whatever case they’re making, as Harder has.

Opinion

His office on Wednesday issued a four-paragraph press release about Harder backing the effort. Part reads:

This summer a California sheriff’s deputy, David Faiivae, nearly died of a fentanyl overdose after he was exposed while on duty. The deputy found a white substance while on patrol and immediately went into an overdose. His Field Training Officer, Corporal Scott Crane, saved his life by quickly administering him Naloxone, an overdose reversal drug.

Harder’s release points people to an Aug. 6 Sacramento Bee article on the incident, which was featured in a moving video produced by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department. They packaged body-camera footage with dramatic music, video of the recovered deputy wiping away a tear and the San Diego sheriff sternly warning all officers everywhere to be on their guard for exposure overdoses.

What Harder apparently missed was The Sacramento Bee’s follow-up story five days later debunking the sheriff’s narrative. And The Washington Post’s similar fact-check story, and The New York Times’, and USA Today’s, and the San Diego Tribune’s, and numerous others.

All thoroughly discredited the idea that anyone could get a whiff of fentanyl upon opening a package, keel over and stop breathing, as Faiivae did, requiring that his partner administer Naloxone (commonly known by the brand name Narcan), a nasal spray that helps reverse overdoses.

Fentanyl is a ruthless killer

Let’s be clear: Illicit fentanyl is a dangerous, undiscriminating killer.

My column in November about the ravages of fentanyl here in Stanislaus County was read more online than any other opinion column or editorial I’ve written in the past year. People are becoming all too aware that this potent drug is scourging families in Modesto and across America. Less than two weeks after my column, District Attorney Birgit Fladager brought a murder charge against the guy who allegedly sold a deadly pill to a young man I wrote about who ended up dead.

So Harder, a Turlock Democrat, is not wrong to back this legislation.

But anyone on his staff who bothered to Google Faiivae’s name would easily have seen numerous reports discrediting the San Diego story as the urban legend it is.

As Harder prepares to leave almost all of Stanislaus County behind to run for the Stockton-based new Ninth Congressional District (the sparsely populated northeast tip of Stanislaus County, north of Oakdale, is in the Ninth), he will do well to check and double check before sending out flawed email blasts.

At a time like this, when rampant misinformation is hurting all of us, we should be able to depend on elected officials — including Harder, who otherwise enjoys a solid reputation — to stick to the truth.

When people think they can’t trust leaders on the little things, they might not trust them on anything.