The NYPD is rolling out a high-tech tactic to battle pill thieves: outfitting decoy prescription bottles with GPS tracking devices.
Every one of the city’s 1,800 pharmacies will receive the rigged bottles of fake OxyContin — which look identical to the real thing — in March, Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday at a panel discussion in California.
“The NYPD knows firsthand the destructive power of addiction to OxyContin,” Kelly said during the speech at the Clinton Foundation Health Matters Conference in La Quinta.
“We’re also distributing so-called ‘bait bottles’ containing placebo oxycodone pills to be placed on pharmacy shelves,” Kelly revealed.
“These bottles will be equipped with a GPS tracking device that the police can use to follow the bottle and possibly locate ‘stash’ locations.”
All 6,000 licensed pharmacists in the city will be made aware of the program, Kelly said, an effort to catch pill-addicted burglars in the growing national epidemic.
The NYPD initiative will be the largest in the nation despite the fact that other localities have already launched similar programs in pharmacies.
Here’s how it will work in the Big Apple.
The bait bottles, developed by the manufacturer of OxyContin — Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma — will be sealed like real Oxy bottles with a GPS tracking device inside.
Pharmacists are alerted to which bottles are decoys.
Each decoy bottle is carefully constructed in such a way that when it’s shaken, it gives off a rattling sound as if pills are inside, but they’re not.
If a decoy is snatched off the shelf by a thief, a third-party security firm will track the device and notify the NYPD.
During his speech, Kelly also said his department will educate students at the high school and college levels about the dangers of prescription-drug abuse via a lesson plan that has been delivered to 400,000 students citywide.
Also, he said, he hopes to slash the number of pharmacy burglaries and robberies by employing “Operation Safety Cap,” which provides NYPD security recommendations to all dispensaries in the five boroughs.
In addition, police training will be enhanced to include issues surrounding prescription-drug abuse.