Hacker News is the last place I would expect people to blindly accept police press releases at face value, particularly when they fly in the face of basic science.
Your first link shows a guy administering Narcan to a man who's standing up, fully conscious, with his eyes open. Even if you've never seen an overdose in your life, that should set off some alarm bells.
These stories are evergreen and predictable. They make for good viral clickbait content, despite the fact that they never hold up. Every time, the story is the same: they run a test afterwards, and 90% of the time it turns out that there's no fentanyl in their system. The other 10% of the time, it turns out that the cop saw an opportunity to take a hit off the drugs they just seized (oftentimes non-opiate), and that resulted in an overdose.
For future reference, a good hint that these stories aren't portraying what they claim to be is that they almost never show people with symptoms consistent with fentanyl overdose (and typically with symptoms consistent of a panic attack).
We're all prone to missing the obvious when it agrees with our ideological predispositions.
The image of the police has become rather ideological of late, e.g. the "defund the police" movement and a counter pro-police movement. Both movements are tied in to other ideological positions, and I've seen quite a lot of HN posts on positions that are associated with pro-police stances (e.g. on climate change, COVID vaccines, etc).
So it doesn't surprise me to see HN readers accepting police press releases at face value. HN may have a reputation for a libertarian ethos, but libertarianism often supports law enforcement. It would be nice if that would get more skepticism when the press releases are such transparent propaganda, but as I said, we're all prone to swallowing propaganda that feels right.
Hacker News is the last place I would expect people to blindly accept police press releases at face value, particularly when they fly in the face of basic science.
Your first link shows a guy administering Narcan to a man who's standing up, fully conscious, with his eyes open. Even if you've never seen an overdose in your life, that should set off some alarm bells.
These stories are evergreen and predictable. They make for good viral clickbait content, despite the fact that they never hold up. Every time, the story is the same: they run a test afterwards, and 90% of the time it turns out that there's no fentanyl in their system. The other 10% of the time, it turns out that the cop saw an opportunity to take a hit off the drugs they just seized (oftentimes non-opiate), and that resulted in an overdose.
For future reference, a good hint that these stories aren't portraying what they claim to be is that they almost never show people with symptoms consistent with fentanyl overdose (and typically with symptoms consistent of a panic attack).