The number of people who died from opioid use in the city last year was more than five times the amount killed in driving accidents, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said Tuesday.
“We don’t have the final numbers for 2017, but it probably looks like it’s going to be 1,600 died from overdoses,” O’Neill said at City and State’s “Protecting New York” summit at Baruch College. “That’s five to six times the rate of people killed in driving accidents.”
O’Neill added that he remains open-minded about the possibility of supervised injection sites in New York City, where addicts will be able to shoot up without fear of being arrested in the hopes they also get treatment there.
“You have to have an open mind. It’s 2018,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen here, those sites. My answer to them was … anything that we can do to save lives, [we’ll do].”
In 2016, 1,374 peopled died of overdoses in the city, according to data from the city Health Department.



