APRIL 13 - 26, 2018 • VOL. 12 — NO. 8
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Sandy Springs Reporter
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After years of friendship, a Gold Girl Scout troop winds down Around Town PAGE 13
► New flavors on City Springs restaurant menu PAGE 2
BY JOHN RUCH johnruch@reporternewspapers.net
Cool weather didn’t stop Libby Labrot, 4, from enjoying some ice cream at the third annual Rhythm & Brews event at Heritage Sandy Springs on Saturday, April 7. The festival featured live music, plus craft beer for grown-ups from the local Pontoon Brewing and others, and family games from Atlanta Sport and Social Club.
PHIL MOSIER
Coping with a Crisis: Opioid addiction in the suburbs EXCLUSIVE SERIES
Opioid ODs are deadlier than mass shootings, but some high schools don’t stock the antidote
I
n the spring of 2014, a student fell out of his chair in a 10th-grade classroom at Buckhead’s North Atlanta High School. A teacher quickly noticed he was unconscious and hardly breathing. After someone called 911, a paramedic arrived and, suspecting an overdose, administered an opioid antidote in hopes of saving the kid’s life. The antidote, known as naloxone, worked. In reviving the student, Atlanta Public Schools staffers suddenly found themselves on the front line of the opioid
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False alarm battle brings public anger, confusion
Chilling to the Rhythm
BY MAX BLAU
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crisis. Nurses realized they could either shake it off as an isolated incident — or prepare for future overdoses to come. Imagine a school without a plan for an active shooter in 2018. Yet there were four times as many fatal opioid overdoses than gun homicides in 2016. Those deaths have
Listen to our special podcast or watch the video of a deeper discussion about the opioid epidemic’s local impact. See page 11
left a haunting trail of news reports across the country that include students finding classmates sprawled out on school bathroom floors and paramedics responding to the overdoses of teachers. In recent years, the rash of in-school overdoses nationwide hasn’t spared Atlanta, as the NAHS incident showed. And graduates of local public and private high schools have died from overdoses to opioids that they first tried as students. Yet many schools — including ones in Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and Brookhaven – have chosen not to stock the life-saving opioid antidote. See OPIOID on page 10
The city’s battle with security companies over false burglar alarms went to the nuclear option April 3, with police saying they won’t respond to automated calls from dozens of publicly named firms. The move is drawing public confusion and anger — some at the city for alerting potential burglars and collectively punishing alarm customers, and some at companies for failing to comply with an ordinance intend to reduce more than 11,000 false alarms a year. A national alarm industry official says the city’s move helps “the bad guys.” Police Chief Ken DeSimone says it makes the city safer by freeing officers from alarm calls that are nearly 100 percent false. It’s all part of a battle over a new city law that puts alarm companies, rather than individual customers, on the hook for false alarms — a concept that is shaking the industry and is already the See FALSE on page 30
Dispute over backyard swim lessons makes a splash in City Hall BY JOHN RUCH johnruch@reporternewspapers.net
A dispute over a backyard swim lesson business is making a splash in City Hall, dividing the City Council and neighbors, and raising the ire of more than 900 angry parents. Some supporters say that helpless children will drown if Swim With Allison can’t stay in business to teach them swimming. Despite such backyard lessons being illegal See BACKYARD on page 20